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PART ONE
Youth Offending and Youth Justice in Context
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Monica Barry and Fergus McNeil
Introduction
This may seem like an odd way to begin a book, but when the Research Highlights Editorial Board first approached us about editing this collection, Fergus had serious doubts. So many good collections, most notably the excellent twin volumes edited by Goldson and Muncie (2006) and Muncie and Goldson (2006), had been produced in recent years, that it was not immediately obvious exactly what yet another volume on youth justice might hope to achieve. Against this hesitation stood a loyalty towards the Research Highlights series that had its origins in the many contributions that the series had made to Fergusâs own professional and academic development. Obviously the latter impulse won the day but, more to the point, it influenced the way in which we jointly sought to shape and structure this volume.
When we approached the contributors we made clear that this collection aimed to provide social work, youth justice and youth work practitioners, managers, policymakers, students and academics with an accessible but scholarly account of contemporary youth justice research in the UK. By gathering contributions from leading researchers we hoped to provide insightful and critical analyses of at least some of the key issues and developments in the field. We also wanted the collection to engage constructively with contemporary policy and practice debates, and to that end we have encouraged the authors of each chapter at least to conclude with some thoughtful consideration of the policy and practice implications of the research that it reviews. We hope that the book offers not just an important and new contribution to existing scholarship but also an important and new contribution to public policy and professional practice in an area of great contemporary interest.
In introducing a collection on youth offending and youth justice it might make some sense to seek to define our key terms. However, we chose not to seek to impose a definition of âyouthâ or âyouth justiceâ on the contributors, not least because this is problematic even across the UK jurisdictions and far more so internationally, where both ages of criminal responsibility and the age-related scope of youth justice systems vary. Similarly, we did not seek to define precisely the timescales which chapters should address, but suggested that authors might want to look back at least over the last decade and, where appropriate to their argument, over the last two or three decades.
The Editorial Board for the Research Highlights series suggested that each chapter should seek to include reference to all four UK countries, though a principal focus on one jurisdiction would be acceptable. As editors we gave contributors considerable latitude in this regard, preferring to allow them to write to their strengths, but seeking to ensure an appropriate jurisdictional reach across the collection as a whole. With hindsight, it is highly regrettable â and perhaps an unpardonable failing in editors all too used to neglecting smaller jurisdictions â that youth justice in Northern Ireland does not feature more prominently in this collection than it does; not least because Northern Ireland has gone much further than most jurisdictions in mainstreaming restorative youth justice. A chapter on that experience would doubtless have strengthened this collection.
The Editorial Board also asked us as editors to consider how we would handle issues around gender, ageism, ethnicity and diversity; care and control; interfaces between childcare, youth justice and criminal justice systems and issues of poverty and discrimination. Thoughwe considered seeking chapters on these important issues and many others, on balance we settled for asking our contributors to pay some attention to these issues within their chapters, as appropriate to their topic. We leave it to readers to judge to what extent they have received adequate coverage, although we are confident that many of these issues emerge very clearly and receive very thoughtful attention.
We reminded the contributors that the Research Highlights series has played a significant role in developing the interfaces between research and practice in social work. Having now seen the project come to fruition and reviewed the excellent chapters that our contributors have provided we rest assured in our original hope that this collection can usefully further that tradition in an area of practice about which all of us are concerned and to which all of us are committed.
Youth offending and youth justice
The rate of youth crime has not risen in recent years, contrary to popular belief fuelled by a sensation-seeking media. And yet the political and legislative machinery is in overdrive, anxious to be seen to be doing something about young peopleâs seeming disaffection with the rule of law. However, the context which ferments such âdisaffectionâ itself is largely ignored, and young people themselves are scapegoated because of their age, their (non-)status, their disregard for âadultâ norms and their seeming inability to conform. But perhaps that is just one side â the adult side â of the story.
Young people see themselves as largely conformist. They may be disaffected, but that is more to do with their inability to infiltrate the perceived âclosed shopâ of adult society because of their status as âyoung peopleâ. Such status in transition renders them deficient in terms of citizenship rights and meaningful responsibilities. Such status results in marginalisation, stigmatisation and discrimination by those (adults) in authority over them. Arguably, for some of them offending is a means of denying that status and relieving the pressure of non-integration.
Whilst youth offending is not increasing, and may in fact have decreased in the last decade or two, there is no doubt that it is an issue in our society. However, this book counters the concern about the problem of youth offending with the argument that youth justice systems, at least as they currently operate in many jurisdictions, are not necessarily the appropriate solution to that problem. Youth offending is not just a question of rational choice by young people, it is also the result of a lack of structural opportunities for young people, in terms of education, employment, housing, adequate income and constructive leisure opportunities. However, this duality between agency and structure in youth crime is rarely seriously considered by politicians and policymakers. The emphasis is very much on blaming young people alone for their propensity to offend and making them responsible for their offending behaviour and the consequences of such behaviour, often through increasingly punitive means. Some argue that youth justice systems in many jurisdictions have lost their âsocial justiceâ ethos. Although they purport to offer multi-disciplinary and welfare-oriented services, their emphasis is increasingly on containment, surveillance and blame within a criminal, rather than a youth justice, ideology.
If the world economy from late 2008 has been described as a âsystem on life supportâ (Mason 2008), then many youth justice systems over the last decade or more could arguably be described in similar terms, not only in respect of their funding and philosophy but also in respect of their impact on young offenders. The book is therefore timely in re-focusing attention on what really matters for young offenders, victims of youth crime and wider publics in terms of making youth justice a social and moral, as well as a political and legal, issue.
Layout of the book
This book is in two parts. The first part puts youth offending and youth justice in their social, theoretical and political contexts. In Chapter 2 Brown suggests that youth and crime are social constructs dependent more on negotiating life course events than on chronological age per se. Nevertheless, she argues that criminality has been defined downwards by policy to an unprecedented younger age and to a broader range of behaviours. Brown describes the recent âlegislative bingeâ in England and Wales which criminalises not only children but also their parents and is fuelled by a hungry media more interested in demonising children than accurately stating the facts. Children and young people are not considered to be âcitizensâ or to have rights in such a climate which increasingly marginalises and penalises them at an ever-younger age.
McVie, in Chapter 3, focuses on the research evidence underpinning developmental and life course criminology. Government policy is heavily influenced by developmental theories of offending, and particularly their efforts to predict later offending from early childhood experiences. But she asks to what extent crime is determined by and predictable from childhood, not least when most children who offend do not continue such behaviour into adulthood. McVie explores the literature on the age-crime curve and on criminal careers and identifies a range of dimensions which show promise in increasing our understanding about the developmental processes which lead to prolonged offending. However, she concludes that youth justice policies based on risk identification, prediction and prevention run the risk of inadvertently stigmatising and criminalising young people.
The criminalisation of young people, according to Morgan (Chapter 4), is a complex issue resulting from increased and earlier involvement of the youth and criminal justice systems in the lives of children and young people. Summary justice developments now mean out-of-court justice, which results in more young people being drawn into the system, greater police powers, less legal accountability, stricter interventions, greater likelihood of breach and consequent labelling of young people as âcriminalsâ. Whilst youth crime rates are stable or falling, the criminalisation and incarceration of young people is increasing. Whilst Morgan acknowledges that the Youth Justice Board has made some considerable improvements in the way the youth justice system operates in England and Wales, the fact remains that the system is still failing young people who offend.
Barry (Chapter 5) explores theories of desistance from crime at both the agency and structural level. She argues that current youth justice policy in the UK is somewhat at odds with much of this theoretical underpinning, with individual âdeficitsâ in young people forming the basis of much youth justice policy at the expense of wider structural constraints. In particular, Barry focuses on the Youth Crime Action Plan for England and Wales which promotes enforcement and punishment, non-negotiable support and earlier intervention as the basis for work with young offenders. Drawing on two studies of looked after young peopleâs perceptions and experiences of offending and desistance, she offsets the policy rhetoric against the views of young offenders themselves to illustrate how current policy is more likely to undermine rather than encourage desistance amongst this age group.
Finally in Part One, Maruna and King (Chapter 6) question from where the increased punitiveness towards young people has emerged in contemporary society. Conventional wisdom oscillates between agreeing that young people will âgrow out of crimeâ and fearing that âonce a criminal, always a criminalâ. The authors explore the extant literature on public attitudes to crime before outlining some of the findings of their own study of householdersâ views about crime and criminals, including âgenerational anxietyâ about young people. Maruna and King conclude that if the public are pessimistic about the âredeemabilityâ of young people, they are more likely to be punitive. However, if the public have a greater awareness of the external influences on offending, they will be less likely to fear, condemn and give up on young people.
Part Two of the book focuses on more practical or specific issues relating to work with young offenders, not only issues for professionals but also for young people themselves. Phoenix opens this section, in Chapter 7, with an exploration of the way youth justice practitioners in England and Wales make sense of the process and techniques of risk assessment to highlight the dichotomy for workers between welfare and punishment and between subjective and objective decision making. She points to a move from rehabilitation to assessment and management of risk so as to fulfil the Governmentâs aim of reducing reoffending. Drawing on a wider study in England of youth justice practitionersâ decision making relating to risk and need, Phoenix explores the possibility that risk assessment tools such as ASSET âdematerialiseâ youthful offending by âindividualisingâ risk. How practitioners negotiate this individualisation in their recommendations to the court is hampered in a climate of structural constraints. Phoenix concludes that the welfare principles that practitioners nonetheless retain in their risk assessments may inadvertently result in more rather than less punitive interventions, not least when such interventions are only available within the confines of the youth justice system.
In Chapter 8 McNeill reviews a wide range of evidence about the effectiveness of community supervision and about âwhat works?â in interventions with young people, arguing that an interrogation of the evidence about âwhat works?â necessarily leads us towards moral questions about âwhatâs right?â. McNeill argues that current correctionalist policy and practice is liable not only to limit the effectiveness of supervision but also to undermine the desistance process. He concludes that supervision needs to give greater precedence to relationships between young people, professionals and others, not least when such relationships are crucial to reducing offending, and that if youth justice is to be legitimate (and thus effective) it cannot but attend to the injustices that many young offenders have suffered.
Halsey and Armitage (Chapter 9) focus on juvenile detention centres in Australia and the effects of custody on non-Indigenous and Indigenous young offenders as well as on professionals working with them. Some 650 10â17-year-olds are held in secure units across Australia, with the majority being males aged 15â17. Whilst Indigenous young people constitute less than 5 per cent of the overall youth population, over half of all incarcerated young people in 2006 were identified as Indigenous. The authors explore some of the cultural issues for such young people, as well as power relations, care versus control, e...
