Engage: Time for positive youth justice?

We don’t always get things right in our work with children and young people but by and large we try to do the right things, as informed by the research evidence base. However, youth justice is the one area I can think of where we blindly and perversely pursue practice which we know is contrary to empirical evidence, whether that is drawn from research into child development, child wellbeing or into desistance from offending. 

We call these young people ‘young offenders’ and work with them through ‘youth offending teams’, despite all we know about the negative impact of such labels and of criminal justice ‘systems contact’ (McAra and McVie 2010). We reserve the most damaging and hostile of environments for our most troubled young people who reach the apex of the youth justice system, incarcerating them in prison service institutions where violence, fear and intimidation are often rife and resources stretched wafer thin. At the other end of the spectrum, despite some recent progress, children and young people are routinely held in police custody as a result of minor offences, often committed within troubled home environments where welfare support is lacking, but for whom our first response is to arrest, discipline and punish; pushing them further into trouble rather than protecting them from it.

So why as a society do we think it is ok to treat children and young people who get into trouble with the law in ways which we know are damaging? This is largely attributable to the ‘justice’ lense we look through when we come to deal with these young people. 

Despite the fact that those who repeatedly offend are overwhelmingly drawn from a cohort of young people with multiple welfare needs and experience of socio-economic deprivation (Smith 2014) once they become part of the justice system the offender identity tends to become their dominant status for public services, obscuring their other needs. The ‘troubled’ become seen primarily as ‘troublesome’; offenders first and children second. Common sense notions about the utility of punishment and the need for deterrence, drawn from adult criminal justice discourse, reach down into the youth justice system; both ‘responsibilising’ and ‘adulterising’ children.

The things we know are likely to bring about positive change for children and young people in conflict with the law are the same things which support positive change for other vulnerable and disadvantaged children and young people (for example see Hanson and Holmes 2014 ‘seven principles’ from their Evidence Scope: That Difficult Age: Developing a more effective response to risks in adolescence).

These include practice predicated upon children’s rights, inclusion and participation, protection from negative, traumatising or stigmatising experiences, and relationship-based practice (Haines and Case 2015). As already suggested, much of what we do in youth justice is in direct contravention of these principles. This is not to say that there is not remarkable work done by skilled practitioners who are able to engage some of society’s most marginalised young people – there most certainly is – but that this is done in spite of the system in which they work and their effort is largely undermined by that system.

Thankfully the moment has arrived when many of the dominant assumptions that underpin practice in youth justice are being questioned, not just by the longstanding critics within the criminological community, but increasingly by practitioners, managers and most encouragingly by government. The current youth justice review being undertaken by Charlie Taylor has the potential to reset the youth justice dial and question – possibly even dismantle – much of the architecture put in place by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, which fundamentally shapes the current system whereby young people who offend are set apart from their peers.

There is a real sense that the opportunity is at hand to end the use of child imprisonment in England and Wales and to reclaim those children and young people set adrift in the justice system as children who are in dire need of children’s services. To realise this paradigm shift will take not only a willingness for the Ministry of Justice to give up its primary claim to children and young people in trouble but it will also require local authorities to demonstrate that they are ready and willing to accept their responsibilities to them as children first and offenders second.

If you would like to be part of a community of practice which promotes ‘children first’ approaches to youth justice, join the ‘Positive Youth Justice’ facebook group or follow the National Association for Youth Justice on twitter: @NAYJtweets.

About the Author

Ben Byrne is Head of the Youth Support Service in Surry. He is a social worker who has spent much of his career working in and around the criminal justice system. Ben is responsible for ensuring all young people who are NEET move to participating in education, training or employment, and for preventing young people’s involvement in offending. This work includes providing services to victims of youth crime and to communities affected by youth offending and anti-social behaviour.

Ben was writing on the Research In Practice blog which you can follow here: https://www.rip.org.uk/news-and-views/blog/

Related Resources

War on words (blog article on how labelling can affect adults with multiple and complex needs), by John Hamblin

That Difficult Age: Developing a more effective response to risks in adolescence

References:

Haines K, Case S (2015) Positive Youth Justice: Children first, offenders second. Bristol: Policy Press.

Hanson E, Holmes D (2014) That Difficult Age: Developing a more effective response to risks in adolescence. Dartington: Research in Practice. Available online: https://www.rip.org.uk/news-and-views/latest-news/evidence-scope-risks-in-adolescence/

McAra, L. and McVie, S. (2010) ‘Youth crime and justice: Key messages from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime’. Criminology and Criminal Justice 10 (2) 179–209.

Smith R (2014) Youth Justice: Ideas, Policy, Practice. Abingdon: Routledge.