Youth Justice

A Critical Introduction

Stephen Case

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000399981
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

This book provides a comprehensive, student-friendly and critical introduction to youth justice in England and Wales, offering a balanced evaluation of its development, rationale, nature and evidence base. It explores the evolution of definitions and explanations of youth offending and examines the responses to it that constitute youth justice.

Bringing together theory, policy and practice, this book provides a balanced exposition of contemporary youth justice debates, including detailed discussions of governmental rationales, policy developments, practical issues and an extensive evaluation of critical academic positions. It includes a range of features designed to engage and inspire students:

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• 'Stop and think': Activities challenging students to reflect on important issues.

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• 'Conversations': Discussions of key themes and issues from the perspectives and experiences of relevant stakeholders, including policy makers and activists.

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• 'Telling it like it is': Testimonies giving voice to the personalised, subjective and contentious viewpoints of youth justice influencers.

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• 'Controversies and debates': Prompts to stimulate students to question and critique established knowledge and understanding by considering alternative angles.

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• 'Recurring theme alerts': Boxes flagging recurring themes in the developing construction of youth offending and youth justice.

The new edition has been fully revised and updated and includes discussion of revised National Standards in Youth Justice, the new 'Child First' strategic objective for youth justice, the 'trauma informed practice' movement, the impact of coronavirus on children in the Youth Justice System and the continued impact of austerity on policy and practice.

This book is essential reading for students taking courses in youth justice, youth offending, youth crime, youth work and social policy.

1

Defining youth offending

The social construction of ‘youth offending’

Chapter outline

1. What puts the ‘youth’ in ‘youth offending’?
2. 1The early social construction of youth offending (pre-1850)
3. 2Socially constructing the innocent–dangerous child dichotomy (1850–1900)
4. 3Socially reconstructing the innocent–dangerous child dichotomy: innocent children–dangerous adolescents (1900–1950)
5. 4Child welfare versus youth justice (1950–1990)
6. 5Reconstructing the child as a ‘youth offender’ (1990 onwards)
7. Defining youth offending: so, what do we know?
8. Notes

Our opening chapter explores the pivotal issue of how youth offending is defined. It is crucial to examine how definitions of youth offending have been created (constructed) and revised (reconstructed) over time through the activities of various social, cultural, economic, political, professional, academic and media influences and influencers. These definitions determine how, what and who is measured and studied in our search for better understandings of the extent, nature and causes of youth offending. Definitions help us to identify the key influences on youth offending behaviour in order that it can be explained more accurately. In turn, explanations and theories of youth offending inform youth justice responses. Accordingly, the definitions, explanations and responses associated with youth offending can be seen as interrelated and mutually reinforcing – as illustrated by the ‘triad of youth justice’ (see Introduction).

A central argument throughout this book is that how ‘youth offending’ is defined and measured (i.e. socially constructed) shapes how it is understood, explained and responded to socially, legally, politically, practically, academically and in the media. In this way, ‘official data are social products’ (Box 1981: 208). Therefore, ‘youth justice’ is best defined as the label given to the formal, systemic responses to offending behaviour by children and young people. Youth justice consists of the philosophies, systems, structures, policies, strategies, processes and practices associated with youth offending – typically informed by official (police and court) statistical measures of the extent and nature of youth offending, but also by self-report studies of offending and victimisation.

Controversies and debates

Measuring youth offending

Much discussion in academic textbooks and student essays focuses on examining statistical trends and patterns in the extent and nature of officially recorded offending by young people over time. These forms of analyses are very useful, of course, because they establish a baseline for how the measurement of youth offending has evolved over time within and between countries and demographic subgroups in these countries (e.g. relating to age, gender and ethnicity). Equivalent analysis of youth justice statistics is possible, for example, examining the trends and patterns in the extent and nature of sentencing in and diversion from the formal Youth Justice System. These youth offending and youth justice statistics are typically labelled ‘official’ in that they represent data on offending behaviour and justice responses recorded by agencies within the official, formal Youth Justice System of a given country; for example, the police, courts, youth justice teams, the probation service and the prison service. As you will already know from your broader study of criminology, official crime and justice statistics can be reliable (consistent) indicators of the levels, distributions and trends in offending reported by the public and recorded by criminal justice agencies. By their very nature, these forms of official statistics do not measure the ‘dark figure’ of unreported and unrecorded crime. This issue does not make official statistics any less reliable or useful, as long as we reflect on the extent to which it can render them incomplete and invalid. However, official statistics can be unreliable if the recording practices of official agencies change over time or vary within and between countries – such as the inconsistency in police recording statistics between local force areas in the UK until 2002. In other words, if recording practice is unreliable, the resultant statistical trends and any international comparisons may be unreliable.

When the neglect of the dark figure of crime is considered alongside the potential for unreliable recording practices, official criminal justice statistics offer a limited, incomplete measure of (youth) crime. However, if these limitations are accounted for, official statistics can provide reliable baseline indicators of the extent and nature of officially reported and officially recorded youth offending within and between different countries and demographic groups. Also, the neglect of the dark figure of crime can be compensated for to some extent through self-report offending and victimisation surveys, such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW – which until 2009–2010 did not survey young people), the International Crime Victims Survey (Europe) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (US). Indeed, the CSEW victimisation survey is now considered to be the ‘official’ source of crime statistics in England and Wales. However, even self-report surveys can be unreliable. They may employ different or additional questions over time, which is highly likely where new offences enter a country’s law and other ‘offences’ drop out due to being decriminalised or legalised. These surveys may also lack validity if respondents lie, exaggerate, withhold information, mislead, forget or otherwise misrepresent their experiences (Thornberry and Krohn 2003). Therefore, self-report surveys come with a series of caveats to bear in mind when examining their methods and interpreting their findings. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t use self-report surveys or other official sources for that matter, but that we should do so with caution and criticality. This is the ‘ABC’ mindset – Always Be Critical. By ‘critical’ I mean reflective, analytical and balanced, rather than seeking to undermine everything that you read or hear!

Arguably the most important benefit of official statistics to our understanding youth offending is not what they tell us about the ostensible reality of youth crime and justice, but more what they tell us about the preferred definitions, explanations, responses, activities and political priorities of governments and formal criminal justice agencies in different countries at different points in time. In order to better understand these activities and their consequences (e.g. the production of official statistics), it is crucial to take a step back from the statistics themselves to examine the very concept they purport to measure – youth offending.

So, what exactly do we mean by ‘youth offending’? What exactly is this behaviour, this category, this phenomenon that official and self-reported statistics have been created to measure? In order to fully understand the extent, nature and influence of youth justice, it is imperative that we operationalise youth offending. By operationalise, I mean to clarify the behaviour it seeks to respond to – how we intend to define, understand and work with our central concept. The preceding ‘Controversies and debates’ box introduces the idea that official (statistical) measures of crime and justice are social constructs (Stephen Box’s ‘social products’). But what is the behaviour that these measures purportedly represent, and how is it defined? The category of ‘youth offending’, like its historical predecessor ‘juvenile delinquency’, is not an uncontested fact. Youth offending is a social construction – the creation of institutions and people in specific societies in specific historical periods through the definitions, labels and measures given to specific behaviours, groups and individuals. What we define and understand as ‘youth offending’ is dynamic – it can vary wildly and rapidly over time and place. The definition of youth offending can also be viewed as contingent – dependent on (dynamic) historical, cultural, social, economic and political contexts. Such change and variability results in definitions of youth offending being contested – subject to debate and disagreement (i.e. a lack of consensus) across history and between and within countries, organisations, professions and individuals. Consequently, youth offending is best viewed as a ‘constructed reality’ rather than a fact – a reality that is constructed at a given point in time and then subject to reconstruction in the future. The dynamic, contingent and contested nature of youth offending is the reason why you may often see the phrase presented within inverted commas, as if to imply some degree of ambiguity and variability in its definition. The social construction of youth offending and the youth justice responses to it will be clearly illustrated as we progress using the example of the UK (latterly England and Wales), the political, social, cultural, professional and academic context in which this book was written. However, throughout the book I intend to reflect on international variations and similarities in how youth offending and youth justice have been socially constructed (see, for example, Arnull and Fox 2016) across different legal cultures in the industrialised Western world¹ and to utilise international examples where relevant. As such, it is hoped that the arguments presented will be of interest and utility to students and youth justice stakeholders across the globe.

So, let’s consider why it is instructive and appropriate to understand youth offending as a social construction. I would argue that there are at least three benefits to knowledge and understanding in adopting this view, relating to the enhancement of:

1. 1Validity: examining youth offending as a social construction provides the most accurate, comprehensive and realistic understanding of what the phenomenon actually is – the complex product (constructed reality) of a series of dynamic, contingent and contested influences, rather than a universal fact that can be uncritically accepted.
2. 2Reliability: if we are clear about exactly what we are focusing on and how it has been operationalised, then we can be consistent and replicable in how we study (e.g. measure) and explain the concept.
3. 3Explanatory utility: the dynamic, contingent and contested definitions of youth offending give us the intellectual space to explain the behaviour differently in different contexts. This social constructionist perspective also allows us to examine the historical, social, political, media and academic influences (and influencers) that have shaped our definitions, explanation and responses regarding youth offending.

Reflecting on the ‘triad of youth justice’ from the Introduction: how we define youth offending can and should (at least) shape and (at best) determine how we explain it, which in turn can and should determine how we respond to it – how we construct and deliver youth justice. Therefore, it is essential to be explicit about what we mean by youth offending at any given point in time. As I have indicated, pinning down the definition of youth offending is a highly complex exercise because the concept is a dynamic social construction subject to a variety of different and sometimes competing influences. A similar problem is faced when seeking to understand the generic category of ‘crime’ or ‘offending’. Defining youth offending becomes further complicated when we consider cultural differences, such as how certain cultures and countries prefer to use the term ‘delinquency’ to ‘offending’ and ‘juvenile’ to ‘youth’. In their review of ‘juvenile’ justice systems in the non-Western world, Friday and Ren (2006) attempt to distinguish between ‘delinquency’ and ‘youth offending’. They assert that in non-Western juvenile justice systems, for example, delinquency is the label given to less serious offending behaviour committed by a young person in need of protection, whereas youth offending is considered more serious and deserving of punishment. However, the authors caution that ‘the fine distinction between youthful offender and delinquent and between the need for help and the demand for punishment is cultural’ and that ‘definitions and interpretations are fluid’ (Friday and Ren 2006: 16).

Controversies and debates

Is it ‘youth offending’ or ‘juvenile delinquency’?

I am not convinced that the distinction between ‘youth offending’ and ‘juvenile delinquency’ is necessarily valid, helpful or relevant, especially when examining the social construction of youth offending and juvenile delinquency in the Western world. In my experience as a youth justice scholar and researcher, more often than not, the terms ‘youth offending’ and ‘juvenile delinquency’ are used interchangeably by youth justice stakeholders such as academics, politicians and practitioners. My advice is to view the concepts as largely synonymous unless the source you are using clearly indicates to you that there are differences in how these terms have been operationalised. For example, some research studies may employ the term ‘delinquency’ as a catch-all concept to encompass both offending (i.e. legally prohibited behaviour) and other ‘deviant’ or ‘antisocial’ behaviours that may not by legally prohibited at a given point in time. Similarly, I seldom perceive much difference in how the terms ‘youth’ and ‘juvenile’ are applied, unless their operationalisation has been clearly differentiated. The key learning point here is to Always Be Critical (ABC) – a...