History, Child Removal, and Youth Justice Policy

Author(s):  
Barry Godfrey ◽  
Pam Cox ◽  
Heather Shore ◽  
Zoe Alker

Chapter 9 starts by summarizing the findings of the current study. Young Criminal Lives is the first study of its kind to use a life course approach to ask whether the early English youth justice system ‘worked’. Within that, it has focused on whether child removal to an institution ‘worked’. The chapter then considers the youth justice system in England and Wales today, which is overseen by the Youth Justice Board. There is then discussion of what can be learned from aspects of the Victorian and Edwardian regimes, and what is no longer possible or acceptable in current conditions. The chapter concludes that Victorian liberalism believed in the public value of ‘the social’ whereas neo-liberalism seeks to segment and monetize it. In the authors’ view, this runs counter to the nurturing of an ethic of care which, as Young Criminal Lives has shown, can never be fully commodified.

Author(s):  
Sarah Brooks-Wilson

This chapter addresses the unintended consequences of a community youth justice sector that has been severely impacted by austerity policies and is decreasing in terms of staff, children, and the wider distribution of practice. The lens of institutional geography is used to reinterpret changes in the youth justice system of England and Wales. The analysis produces new knowledge on how location, movement, and ideology impact community sentence accessibility for children. Despite scant policy attention, practice locations and transport coverage operate in tandem, with one required to fill gaps left by the other in order to maintain service accessibility. Yet, in the context of persistent austerity, both services are affected by increasing service gaps and government accessibility guidance remains narrow in scope, with connections between poverty and service accessibility currently poorly acknowledged. The social policy implications are substantial given that entrenched poverty is overwhelmingly found within populations of convicted and diverted children.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (6/7) ◽  
pp. 713-729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Ricci ◽  
Pietro Pavone

PurposeThe paper aims to reach a better understanding of accountability and social reporting in the Italian justice system, by examining the state of the art of both literature and practice. The case study highlights the critical elements in drawing up the social report of one of the most important Prosecutor Offices in Italy.Design/methodology/approachThe case study analyzes the activities of the actors involved in the report building process by detailing all the steps involved in a research diary, in order to examine such process from the inside, thus reversing its perspective.FindingsThe study shows that both the lack of guidelines for judicial administrations and a consolidated trend of transforming administrative facts into documents useful to stakeholders slow down the evolution of practices, which are stuck in a perpetual trial stage.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations are mainly related to the adoption of a single case study, which does not include any comparison with other reporting experiences in the justice sector.Originality/valueThis paper adds evidence to the theoretical debate on social reporting in the justice sector which has so far received the attention of a limited number of scholars. Furthermore, unlike other studies focusing exclusively on the final report while overlooking the process that turns input into output, this research deals with the core of the social reporting process and practices in their development, capturing their most intimate and controversial aspects from the inside.


1998 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane B. Sprott

This study examined the frequently reported finding that the public believes that youth court sentences are too lenient and that young offenders should be processed in the adult justice system. These beliefs, along with the view that sentences for specific cases should be harsher, were all related to one another in an Ontario, Canada, survey. However, the nature of the relationship was complex, and more detailed analyses suggested that the wish to imprison young offenders was not solely a desire for more punitive responses but instead was due, in part, to perceptions that alternatives to prison were ineffective.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Eric Baumgartner

Boys and young men continue to make up 81 percent of the Youth Justice System (YJS) in England and Wales, yet dominant discourses on young people who have been identified as having offended largely neglect to examine the potential role of masculinity in offending and interventions. This article aims to fill the gap of research in this area by exploring the role masculinity may play as understood by practitioners. It concludes that practitioners closely link “localized forms of hegemonic masculinity” to offending behavior of boys and young men.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Howard ◽  
Clare McCann ◽  
Margaret Dudley

Communication assistance is a form of specialist support for witnesses and defendants in justice settings who have been identified as having communication difficulties. This relatively new role in New Zealand is modelled on the role of the intermediary in England and Wales. This research provides a qualitative analysis of professionals’ perspectives (n = 28 participants) on the challenges of communication assistance for young people facing criminal charges in the New Zealand youth justice system. The findings of this study do not question whether or not communication assistance should exist, but rather how it might best function in practice. The overall implications are that more education and guidance for youth justice professionals is needed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147737082199685
Author(s):  
Stephen Case ◽  
Nuria Lorenzo-Dus ◽  
Ralph Morton

This article presents an evidence-based analysis of the communicative influences on children’s engagement in the Youth Justice System of England and Wales. The multidisciplinary criminologist–linguist ‘YOT Talk’ project utilized Svalberg’s (2009) dimensions of engagement (cognitive, affective, social; augmented by behavioural) to explore the enablers of, and barriers to, children’s engagement with youth justice assessment processes. A tripartite mixed methodology of observation of assessment interviews, questionnaires with children in the Youth Justice System and youth justice practitioners, and focus groups with practitioners was implemented across three Youth Offending Teams in England and Wales. Analyses synergized methods from conversation analysis and corpus linguistics. Findings inform recommendations for refocusing youth justice assessment and staff training on facilitating children’s communicative engagement (that is, enhancing enablers and removing/minimizing barriers). These findings and recommendations challenge asymmetrical (adult-centric) power dynamics during assessment interviews and challenge perceptions of children’s communicative deficits as irreconcilable barriers to effective assessment.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 124-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Camponez

This article seeks to explore the contributions of an ethic of care for journalism. Far from refusing the objectivity paradigm, the ethics of care emphasizes the role of journalism in its engagement with the public sphere and democracy, stressing the social responsibility dimension based on respect for the different stakeholders in the complex process of information: the subject who informs, the public and the information sources; journalism as a professional culture. This perspective can be a response to the contradictions that we find across the normative field of journalism, tightly placed between the paradigm of objectivity, freedom of speech and the market demands. In a communication where the logics of commodification, entertainment and audiences prevail, the ethics of care based on respect can become an alternative response towards a new public contract and journalism’s credibility.


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