A reform school was a penal institution, generally for teenagers mainly operating between 1830 and 1900. In the United Kingdom and its colonies reformatories commonly called reform schools were set up from 1854 onwards for youngsters who were convicted of a crime as an alternative to an adult prison. In parallel, "Industrial schools" were set up for vagrants and children needing protection. Both were 'certified' by the government from 1857, and in 1932 the systems merged and both were 'approved' and became approved schools. Both in the United Kingdom and United States, they came out of social concerns about cities, poverty, immigration, and vagrancy following industrialization, as well as from a shift in society's attitude from retribution, punishing the miscreant to reforming. They were distinct from borstals (1902-1982 UK), which were enclosed juvenile prisons. History Social reformers in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries almost invariably found fault with the then-usual practice of treating juvenile offenders essentially the same as adult criminals. It was recognized that the juveniles were often sexually and otherwise exploited by the older inmates and that they were often receiving instruction in more advanced and serious ways of crime by hardened criminals. As a result, rather than their sentences serving as a deterrent to future crimes, many juvenile offenders emerged from incarceration far worse than when they were first sentenced. The reforms, which were adopted more readily in some states than others, consisted of a two-pronged approach: a separate juvenile code and juvenile courts for offenders who had not reached the age of majority, and the building of separate institutions for juvenile "delinquents" (the stigmatizing term "criminal" not being used). Because the primary purpose of these institutions was to be rehabilitative rather than punitive, they were styled "reform schools". For the most part, these institutions were custodial. In the United Kingdom, reformatory schools were provided for criminal children whilst industrial schools were intended to prevent vulnerable children from becoming criminal. There was a perceived rise in juvenile delinquency in the early 19th century; whereas in a rural economy very young children could gain paid employment doing tasks such as bird scaring and stone gathering these opportunities were not available in the cities. Children were very visible on the streets. In 1816, Parliament set up a ‘Committee for Investigating the Alarming Increase in Juvenile Crime in the Metropolis’, in 1837 the writer Charles Dickens