scholarly journals YOT Talk: Examining the communicative influences on children’s engagement with youth justice assessment processes

2021 ◽  
pp. 147737082199685
Author(s):  
Stephen Case ◽  
Nuria Lorenzo-Dus ◽  
Ralph Morton
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Staff Training ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Effective Assessment

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.

“Why Do We Ask Them About Their Gender, If We Then Go on to Do Nothing with It?”

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Eric Baumgartner
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Offending Behavior ◽  
Dominant Discourses

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.

‘I was flying blind a wee bit’: Professionals’ perspectives on challenges facing communication assistance in the New Zealand youth justice system

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Howard ◽  
Clare McCann ◽  
Margaret Dudley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young People ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Communication Difficulties ◽  
Criminal Charges

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.

Human rights and youth justice reform in England and Wales: A systemic analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Cunneen ◽  
Barry Goldson ◽  
Sophie Russell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Systemic Analysis ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines critically the persistently antagonistic relationship – across the past quarter-century – between the provisions of international human rights instruments and the nature and direction of youth justice reform in England and Wales. It introduces the core provisions of the human rights framework that pertain to youth justice and it sketches the nature and direction of policy reform over the 25-year period under scrutiny (1991–2016). To obtain a comprehensive sense of the relationship between human rights and youth justice reform in the jurisdiction, it applies a detailed systemic analysis; beginning at the point at which criminal responsibility is formally imputed and progressing through each stage of the youth justice system, up to the point where the child might ultimately be deprived of her/his liberty. By taking a ‘long-view’ of youth justice reform and by adopting a systemic end-to-end analysis of the human rights–youth justice interface, the article presents an analytical account of both change (policy reforms) and continuity (the enduring nature of human rights violations).

‘It was like more easier’: Rangatahi (Young People) and Their whānau (Family) Talk About Communication Assistance in the New Zealand Youth Justice System

Youth Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 147322542092376
Author(s):  
Kelly Howard ◽  
Clare McCann ◽  
Margaret Dudley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young People ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Justice System ◽  
System Communication ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Communication Difficulties

This qualitative study gives voice to rangatahi (young people) and their whānau (families) (n = 10) who have experienced communication assistance in the New Zealand youth justice system. Communication assistance is a form of specialist support for witnesses and defendants who have been identified as having communication difficulties; and is modelled on the role of the intermediary in England and Wales. The findings overall suggest that communication assistance has a valuable and ongoing role to play in the NZ youth justice system, and may be one means of addressing the rights and needs of those with communication difficulties who offend.

History, Child Removal, and Youth Justice Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Godfrey ◽  
Pam Cox ◽  
Heather Shore ◽  
Zoe Alker
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Public Value ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Public ◽  
Life Course Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Early English

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.

scholarly journals The ART of apologizing: Entering the black box of an intervention program

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tholander ◽  
Kjerstin Andersson Bruck
Keyword(s):  
Treatment Program ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Intervention Program ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Treatment Programs ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Evidence Based Treatment ◽  
Aggression Replacement Training

AbstractDuring recent decades, evidence-based treatment programs have become a given part of the youth justice system. Typically, such programs are evaluated through quantitative effect studies, in which a variety of outcome measures play a significant role. This case study offers an alternative, interactional evaluation of a treatment program. More specifically, the analysis focuses on an Aggression Replacement Training (ART) session that was held at a youth detention home in Sweden. In this session, two trainers and three detained adolescent boys perform an exercise that serves to teach the latter various apology practices. A detailed, conversation analytic examination of the interaction in the session shows that the trainers repeatedly problematize the boys’ contributions in a kind of deviant-making enterprise. Thus, rather than recognizing competencies that do become visible through closer inspection, the trainers one-sidedly highlight lack and deficiency. It is argued that the interpretative frame of ART, with its focus on pathologization, individualization, and responsibilization, amplifies the incarcerated boys’ deviancy, hence symbolically locking them up in a second, non-material or discursive, sense.

The sleep of (criminological) reason: Knowledge—policy rupture and New Labour’s youth justice legacy

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Goldson
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Social Harm ◽  
Evidence Based Policy ◽  
Knowledge Policy ◽  
Analytical Assessment ◽  
Knowledge And Practice

For over a decade, three successive New Labour administrations have subjected the English youth justice system to a seemingly endless sequence of reforms. At the root of such activity lies a core tension between measured reason and punitive emotion; between an expressed commitment to ‘evidence-based policy’ and a populist rhetoric of ‘tough’ correctionalism. By engaging a detailed analytical assessment of New Labour’s youth justice programme, this article advances an argument that the trajectory of policy has ultimately moved in a diametrically opposed direction to the route signalled by research-based knowledge and practice-based evidence. Moreover, such knowledge— policy rupture has produced a youth justice system that ultimately comprises a conduit of social harm. All of this raises serious questions of knowledge/evidence—policy relations and, more fundamentally, of democracy, power and accountability.

How geographical and ideological proximity impact community youth justice (in)accessibility in England and Wales

2020 ◽  
pp. 183-206
Author(s):  
Sarah Brooks-Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
The Other ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Service Accessibility ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Knowledge

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.

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