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Youth justice practice with girls

Becky Shepherd

in Women and Criminal Justice: From the Corston Report to Transforming Rehabilitation

This chapter considers the treatment of girls within the youth justice system, and how this compares to the adult criminal justice system’s provision for women offenders. It examines key ... More

This chapter considers the treatment of girls within the youth justice system, and how this compares to the adult criminal justice system’s provision for women offenders. It examines key recommendations of the Corston Report and provides comparisons with youth justice practice and policy. The chapter addresses practice issues relating to working with girls in youth custody settings and within the community. The issue of girls’ multiple vulnerabilities is discussed, with consideration of the implications this has for youth justice practice and policy. The need for a more compassionate and gender responsive youth justice strategy in relation to girls is highlighted. The chapter is illustrated with examples drawn from the author’s Youth Offending Team casework experience.Less

Juvenile Justice and Crime Policy in Europe

Frieder Dünkel

in Juvenile Justice in Global Perspective

This chapter evaluates youth justice policies and practice in Europe from a comparative perspective. It focuses on tendencies in youth justice legislation and on the sentencing practice of ... More

This chapter evaluates youth justice policies and practice in Europe from a comparative perspective. It focuses on tendencies in youth justice legislation and on the sentencing practice of prosecutors and judges in youth courts. It also considers the traditional “welfare” and “justice” models of youth justice and how they have become intertwined in modern European practice. It questions the claim that a “new punitiveness” is the prevailing strategy, and draws attention to the practice of many youth justice systems, which seem to be fairly resistant to neoliberal policies. The chapter concludes that youth justice policy, as reflected in legislation and practice in the majority of European countries, has successfully resisted a punitive turn.Less

Juvenile Offending: Welfare or Toughness

Claire McDiarmid

in Law Making and the Scottish Parliament: The Early Years

The most striking point about offending by juveniles during the period of the Scottish Parliament's existence is the political capital which ‘dealing with the problem’ is perceived to create. The ... More

The most striking point about offending by juveniles during the period of the Scottish Parliament's existence is the political capital which ‘dealing with the problem’ is perceived to create. The past ten years have been a period in which the media have affirmed and reaffirmed the ‘problem’ of out-of-control youth. While this account has not gone unchallenged, it can be said to have been dominant and it has given governments, both in Westminster and Holyrood, the opportunity to be seen to be taking a firm stance. This chapter discusses the early signs of tension between toughness and welfare, youth justice as a social construction and the child/criminal paradox, the centrality of welfare, youth courts, fast-track children's hearings, victims and the child's welfare, the Anti-social Behaviour etc (Scotland) Act 2004, and the SNP administration.Less

The prevention of youth crime: a risky business?

David Porteous

in Growing up with risk

New Labour's ascent to power in 1997 led to a ‘new youth justice’. In this reformed system, the assessment and management of risk has been given a pivotal role. All young people referred to Youth ... More

New Labour's ascent to power in 1997 led to a ‘new youth justice’. In this reformed system, the assessment and management of risk has been given a pivotal role. All young people referred to Youth Offending Teams in England and Wales are now assessed using a common, structured risk-assessment profile known as Asset. This is intended to guide practitioners' judgements as to the ‘riskiness’ of a young person and to enable them to identify the precise ‘risk factors’ contributing to their offending behaviour such that interventions can be tailored to individual needs. This chapter attempts to tell the story of how the language of, and policies and practices associated with, risk in the new youth justice have come to hold such significance, and to assess the consequences of these changes. It suggests that current policy constitutes a blend of particular academic, administrative, and political discourses, each of which define and mobilise the concept of risk in different ways. The chapter also attempts to evaluate the impact of recent reforms in the context of wider debates about risk assessment and management in the criminal-justice system.Less

What’s valuable, what’s valued in today’s youth justice?

Anne Robinson

in Values in criminology and community justice

This chapter looks critically at the New Labour reforms to the youth justice system and the ideas and values active in political rhetoric, policy and practice throughout their three terms in office. ... More

This chapter looks critically at the New Labour reforms to the youth justice system and the ideas and values active in political rhetoric, policy and practice throughout their three terms in office. Three distinct periods were evident and there is now a fourth separate period taking shape under the Coalition, operating with a different ideology and in a climate of austerity. Some of New Labour’s extensive youth justice framework is being dismantled but other elements - such as multi-agency youth offending teams - are still in place. And while the Coalition is less keen on criminalising young people, it seems no more on their ’side’ than New Labour. The question is whether academics and practitioners can come together to press for change in a direction that is more attentive to young people in transition and their needs.Less

Early intervention in the youth justice sphere: a knowledge-based critique

Barry Goldson

in Prevention and youth crime: Is early intervention working?

Some children and young people are conceived as being particularly susceptible to ‘risk’, implying constructions of vulnerability and invoking the imperatives of protection and safeguarding (as in ... More

Some children and young people are conceived as being particularly susceptible to ‘risk’, implying constructions of vulnerability and invoking the imperatives of protection and safeguarding (as in modern child welfare discourse). Conversely, different constituencies of the young are deemed to comprise a primary source of ‘risk’, implying a threatening or menacing presence and invoking regulatory and corrective priorities (as in contemporary youth justice discourse). Such binary conceptualisations inevitably tend to oversimplify. Nonetheless, they each provide rationales for various forms of early intervention, greater levels of adult supervision, more intensive patterns of regulation and surveillance and, ultimately, circumscribed access to public spaces for children and young people. On closer inspection, however, whether in the child welfare realm or the youth justice domain, the logic and consequence of early intervention strategies are pitted with theoretical, conceptual and practical problems. This chapter engages with such problems as they specifically relate to the youth justice sphere in the United Kingdom and, by drawing on key sources of evidence in the space available, provides a knowledge-based critique of early intervention.Less

Setting the scene: risk, welfare and rights

Sarah Jones and Kerry Baker

in Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements and Youth Justice

This chapter outlines key features of the youth justice system in England and Wales, including the current focus on risk assessment and targeted interventions. It sets out some of the multiple ... More

This chapter outlines key features of the youth justice system in England and Wales, including the current focus on risk assessment and targeted interventions. It sets out some of the multiple responsibilities that Youth Offending Teams have towards young people and the various partnerships that they are expected to engage with. In setting the scene, the chapter provides a basic overview of Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements. The chapter concludes by highlighting critical questions raised by the intersection of risk, rights and welfare in youth justice.Less

Promoting public protection in youth justice: challenges for policy and practice

David Monk

in Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements and Youth Justice

Two largely separate populations of children and young people are known to Youth Offending Teams (YOTs): the first at risk of committing serious harm to others and the second for whom safeguarding ... More

Two largely separate populations of children and young people are known to Youth Offending Teams (YOTs): the first at risk of committing serious harm to others and the second for whom safeguarding concerns may have been identified. One of the early concerns voiced by many YOTs in relation to Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) has been that, despite their inclusion as an agency with a ‘duty to cooperate’ through the 2003 Criminal Justice Act, arrangements on the ground have generally remained adult focused. This is in part a product of the fact that YOTs took their place at the MAPPA table some time after the police and the probation service had established closer working relationships. This chapter highlights key principles that underpin the development of public protection within youth justice in England and Wales. It also discusses some of the developments stemming from key partnerships (for instance between the Youth Justice Board and the Parole Board).Less

Introduction: An Experiment in Youth Justice

Carla J. Barrett

in Courting Kids: Inside an Experimental Youth Court

This introductory chapter briefly outlines the alternative-to-incarceration (ATI) program exercised by the Manhattan Youth Part, the one courtroom set aside in Manhattan for criminal cases involving ... More

This introductory chapter briefly outlines the alternative-to-incarceration (ATI) program exercised by the Manhattan Youth Part, the one courtroom set aside in Manhattan for criminal cases involving youths who are required by New York State law to be prosecuted as adults. Founded in 1992 by retired Judge Michael Corriero, the unique criminal court undertook an experiment in youth justice. Working within the statutory constraints of retributive law, the Manhattan Youth Part created a system of justice that sought to hold young defendants—nearly all of them black and/or Hispanic males between the ages of 14 and 18—accountable for their alleged crimes while acknowledging their adolescence and attempting to divert them away from the full force of the adult sentences they were facing. The chapter also explores the history and development of juvenile justice within the United States, and describes the research methods used by the author in writing the book.Less

Community sentences and desistance from crime

David Faulkner and Ros Burnett

in Where Next For Criminal Justice?

This chapter focuses on community-based sentences and interventions, and on individual change processes, from offending to desistance and reintegration in society. Supervision of offenders in the ... More

This chapter focuses on community-based sentences and interventions, and on individual change processes, from offending to desistance and reintegration in society. Supervision of offenders in the community has traditionally fallen to probation services and the youth offending services of local authorities. This chapter therefore looks at shared aspects of these two public sector services, and provides a critical review of their restructuring and recharacterisation during the past three decades, towards being services concerned with punishing and managing people and away from caring, helping and nurturing change. It explores frontline practice in work with offenders and their families; interagency partnerships and voluntary sector contributions to community justice; and the role of relationship and personal agency and other self factors in effective interventions. In reviewing rehabilitation, the chapter looks at alternative approaches and bodies of research relevant to contemporary rehabilitative practice: psychotherapy and counselling; therapeutic jurisprudence; procedural justice; and the desistance paradigm. It highlights some recent multi-agency initiatives that exemplify good practice, through joined-up practical help, problem-solving and strengths-based approaches which engage the capabilities and decision of individuals in turning their lives around.Less

Risk assessment and risk management: the right approach?

Hazel Kemshall

in Young people and 'risk'

In recent years, the ‘risk business’ has seen a phenomenal growth and net widening. This also applies to crime management, with risk forming a key ingredient of the penal policy. In the adult arena, ... More

In recent years, the ‘risk business’ has seen a phenomenal growth and net widening. This also applies to crime management, with risk forming a key ingredient of the penal policy. In the adult arena, this has seen increased attention to the ‘community protection model’, with an emphasis on public protection sentencing, restrictive conditions in the community and interventions led by risk. Within this paradigm, moral re-engineering programmes focused on monitoring, surveillance and ‘management in place’. This pervasiveness of risk has also seeped into the youth justice arena and into social policy conception of the youths, resulting to the increased ‘problematisation of youth’ and state-driven interventions to control and regulate youths. This chapter discusses risk assessment and risk management in youths. It focuses on the right approaches to the management and regulation of young offenders. It particularly highlights the need to distinguish adult risk prevention paradigm from children risk prevention paradigm as children are significantly different from adults.Less

the Impact of Law Reform: Deinstitutionalization in Law and Practice in the United States

in Justice for Girls?: Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada

The last forty years of the twentieth century were a turbulent period for youth justice in both Canada and the United States. The 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act was the first ... More

The last forty years of the twentieth century were a turbulent period for youth justice in both Canada and the United States. The 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act was the first substantial piece of federal juvenile justice legislation that affected juvenile justice in the individual states. One of the main goals of this act was to deinstitutionalize status offenders. The deinstitutionalization goal, however, could be seen as conflicting with intervention. This chapter explores how the tension between wanting to intervene and wanting not to incarcerate youths for non-criminal behaviors played out, focusing on the youth court processing (for example, bringing the juvenile into court, adjudicating the delinquent, and sentencing the offender to custody) of status offenses. It looks at two types of relatively minor offending — obstructing justice and disorderly conduct — in order to see if there are any consistencies in how these status-type offenses are handled for boys and girls.Less

MAPPA as ‘risk in action’: discretion and decision making

Kerry Baker

in Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements and Youth Justice

Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) are a fascinating example of ‘risk in action’, combining elements of the new penology with a more traditional (or perhaps clinical) focus on ... More

Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) are a fascinating example of ‘risk in action’, combining elements of the new penology with a more traditional (or perhaps clinical) focus on individualised assessment and tailored interventions. This chapter explores the balance between rules and discretion in MAPPA, the significance of informal practice, and some of the factors influencing decision making. It raises some important questions about the current MAPPA framework that should prompt further consideration of ways in which it could be developed so as to be more appropriate not only for young people but also for practitioners and managers in youth justice. It notes how discretion is able to peep through the cracks of public protection and in some places can be widely exercised by those operating on the front line of practice. The chapter argues that risk aversion (based on ‘othering’) may lead to exclusionary practices, but on the other hand, risk-based practice can potentially encompass more inclusive and rehabilitative approaches if staff have the appropriate skills to exercise professional discretion in their choice of interventions.Less

Paternalism and the Social Control of Adolescent Girls: Juvenile Justice Reform in Canada

in Justice for Girls?: Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada

In 1894, the federal government of Canada legislated its first separate juvenile court. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, separate courts were beginning to be developed in the country. ... More

In 1894, the federal government of Canada legislated its first separate juvenile court. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, separate courts were beginning to be developed in the country. Another focus was on reforming youths who committed criminal offenses and perhaps an early articulation of status offenders, although this covered only girls under 13 and boys under 12 in Ontario. The most well-known and comprehensive legislation — designed to bring youths in youth court not only for federal (criminal) offenses, but also for violation of provincial and municipal by-laws — was passed in 1908. This was the Juvenile Delinquents Act. Youth justice reforms were more seriously entertained by the government during the 1960s and 1970s. This chapter discusses juvenile justice reform in Canada aimed at preventing delinquency among adolescent girls. It looks at various laws passed to achieve this objective, including the Young Offenders Act (1984–2003) and the Youth Criminal Justice Act (2002). It also, compares legislative developments related to youth justice in Canada and the United States.Less

Integrated or targeted youth support services: an essay on ‘prevention’

Howard Williamson

in Prevention and youth crime: Is early intervention working?

There is a lot of mischief within the debate on the respective merits and effectiveness of ‘universal’ versus ‘targeted’ services — of any kind. The point is that, in relation to any ‘target’ group ... More

There is a lot of mischief within the debate on the respective merits and effectiveness of ‘universal’ versus ‘targeted’ services — of any kind. The point is that, in relation to any ‘target’ group but here in the context of young people, services should actually reach and have the desired impact on them. Over the past decade or so, this has produced a particularly polarised debate between, on the one hand, some sections of what might be called the traditional youth service, which has continued to advocate for universality, and, on the other hand, new policy approaches such as youth crime prevention. Youth work is routinely claimed explicitly to be about the personal development of young people and the ‘social education’ of the adolescent, while youth justice is explicitly about holding young people to account for their offending behaviour. This chapter examines the debate on what is the more appropriate approach for youth crime prevention in the United Kingdom, targeted youth support services or integrated youth support services.Less

Evidence-based skills in Welsh youth justice settings

Pamela Ugwudike and Gemma Morgan

in Evidence-Based Skills in Criminal Justice: International Research on Supporting Rehabilitation and Desistance

This chapter presents the findings of a study that examined supervision skills within three youth offending teams. The study focused on youth justice practice in Wales and its objective was to ... More

This chapter presents the findings of a study that examined supervision skills within three youth offending teams. The study focused on youth justice practice in Wales and its objective was to explore how best to integrate research evidence into frontline practice. It found that participating practitioners employed mainly relationship skills. This is a positive finding but there was limited use of evidence-based skills embedded in what is described as the ‘structuring principle' of effective interpersonal interactions (Bonta and Andrews 2017). The skills are change-focused and they impact on what young people learn during interactions with practitioners and the quality of the influence the practitioners exert over them. This chapter examines the factors that impede the application of structuring skills and concludes with a discussion of the ways in which gaps between research and supervision practice can be bridged to enhance the quality of youth justice practice.Less

Paternalism and the Social Control of Adolescent Girls: Juvenile Justice Reform in the United States

in Justice for Girls?: Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada

More recently, there has been concern about the treatment of girls in the youth justice systems of both Canada and the United States. The differences between the treatment of girls and that of boys ... More

More recently, there has been concern about the treatment of girls in the youth justice systems of both Canada and the United States. The differences between the treatment of girls and that of boys have been rarely discussed. Both the development of the juvenile courts and the justifications for a separate juvenile justice system have been oversimplified in many accounts. There were tensions from the beginning about the overall goals of the youth justice system and concerns about whether what was going on was really rehabilitation. In 1967, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, released a report documenting crime and delinquency in the United States. The report raised concerns about due process and advocated reserving court for serious offenses. In 1974, the U.S. Congress passed the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, the first piece of federal legislation directed at the youth justice system.Less