This report describes the Government's plans for placing high quality education at the centre of youth custody. Plans to reform youth custody will see young people appropriately punished while at the same time learning to take responsibility for their actions and gaining the skills and qualifications they need to lead productive, law-abiding lives. Secure Colleges would provide education in a period of detention rather than detention with education as an afterthought. The consultation paper covers: key information on youth custody and the young people held there; the case for change; our vision for Secure Colleges which place education at the heart of the system. The main areas for consideration by all respondents are: tailoring education to young people in custody; meeting the wider needs of young people in custody; closing the gap between custody and community; the physical environment and meeting demand; a focus on outcomes. All responses should be submitted by 30 April 2013
In 1997 the newly modernized Labour party swept into power promising a radical overhaul of the youth justice system. The creation of inter-agency Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) for the delivery of youth justice services were the cornerstone of the new approach. These new YOTs were designed to tackle an 'excuse culture' that was allegedto pervade the youth justice system and aimed to encourage the emergence of a shared culture among youth justice practitioners from different agencies. The transformation of the youth justice system brought about a period of intense disruption for the practitioners working within it. The nature and purpose of contemporary youth justice work was called into question and wider issues of occupational identity and culture became of crucial importance. Through a detailed ethnographic study of the formation of a YOT this book explores a previously neglected area of organisational cultures in criminal justice. It examines the nature of occupational culture and professional identity through the lived experience of youth justice professionals in this time of transition and change.It shows how profound and complex of the effects of organisational change are, and the fundamental challenges it raises for practitioners' sense of professional identity and vocation. Transforming Youth Justice makes a highly significant contribution not only to the way that professional cultures are understood in criminal justice, but to an understanding of the often dissonant relationship between policy and practice.
Recalibrating Juvenile Detention chronicles the lessons learned from the 2007 to 2015 landmark US District Court-ordered reform of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) in Illinois, following years of litigation by the ACLU about egregious and unconstitutional conditions of confinement. In addition to explaining the implications of the Court’s actions, the book includes an analysis of a major evaluation research report by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and explains for scholars, practitioners, administrators, policymakers, and advocates how and why this particular reform of conditions achieved successful outcomes when others failed. Maintaining that the Chicago Crime Lab findings are the "gold standard" evidence-based research (EBR) in pretrial detention, Roush holds that the observed "firsts" for juvenile detention may perhaps have the power to transform all custody practices. He shows that the findings validate a new model of institutional reform based on cognitive-behavioral programming (CBT), reveal statistically significant reductions in in-custody violence and recidivism, and demonstrate that at least one variation of short-term secure custody can influence positively certain life outcomes for Chicago’s highest-risk and most disadvantaged youth. With the Quarterly Journal of Economics imprimatur and endorsement by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, the book is a reverse engineering of these once-in-a-lifetime events (recidivism reduction and EBR in pretrial detention) that explains the important and transformative implications for the future of juvenile justice practice. The book is essential reading for graduate students in juvenile justice, criminology, and corrections, as well as practitioners, judges, and policymakers.
This handbook brings together the knowledge on juvenile imprisonment to develop a global, synthesized view of the impact of imprisonment on children and young people. There are a growing number of scholars around the world who have conducted in-depth, qualitative research inside of youth prisons, and about young people incarcerated in adult prisons, and yet this research has never been synthesized or compiled. This book is organized around several core themes including: conditions of confinement, relationships in confinement, gender/sexuality and identity, perspectives on juvenile facility staff, reentry from youth prisons, young people’s experiences in adult prisons, and new models and perspectives on juvenile imprisonment. This handbook seeks to educate students, scholars, and policymakers about the role of incarceration in young people’s lives, from an empirically-informed, critical, and global perspective.
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.
This book explores the journey of young people through a Secure Training Centre and, more generally, the criminal justice system in the UK. It examines the extent to which young people have been failed by the system at every stage of their lives, with incarceration used as a means of removing ‘the problem’ from society. To explore this process, the authors utilise an integrated theoretical framework to develop a new rehabilitative approach focused on developing positive outcomes for young people. The book deploys a social impact measurement methodology to evaluate the experience and outcomes of youth justice interventions at a Secure Training Centre. Such an approach provides a fresh perspective on the youth justice debate which has traditionally utilised outcome data to measure immediate impact relating to recidivism and is therefore not focused on the young person holistically. Using a social impact framework to evaluate youth justice, underpinned by an integrated theoretical framework, allows for assessment to be made which place the young person at the centre of evaluation.
The exciting new edition of this well-loved textbook offers a fully expanded and revised account and analysis of the youth justice system in the UK, taking into account and fully addressing the significant changes that have taken place since the second edition in 2007. The book maintains its critical analysis of the underlying assumptions and ideas behind youth justice, as well as its policy and practice, laying bare the inadequacies, inconsistencies and injustices of practice in the UK. This edition will offer an important update in light of intervening changes, as reflected in a change of government and shifting patterns of interventions and outcomes. This book will be an important resource for youth justice practitioners and will also be essential to students taking courses in youth crime and youth justice.
Every day children exiled to prison are exposed to abusive and neglectful treatment, yet their plight is hidden. Based on wide-ranging research and first-person interviews, this passionately argued book presents the shocking truth about the lives and deaths of children in custody. Drawing on human rights legislation and progress in the care and treatment of vulnerable children elsewhere, it outlines the harsh realities of penal child custody including hunger, denial of fresh air, cramped and dirty cells, strip-searching, segregation, the authorised infliction of severe pain, uncivilised conditions for suicidal children and ever-present violence and intimidation. The issues are explored through the lens of protection, not punishment, and the author finds there can be only one conclusion: child prisons must close. Providing a compelling manifesto for urgent and radical change, this book should be read by everyone who cares about child protection and human rights.
Current youth justice policy aims to introduce principles of restorative justice and involve victims in responses to crime. The challenges involved in delivering this in a form that is sensitive to victims are considerable. This report provides an evaluation of the manner in which one Youth Offending Service sought to integrate victims.
How can youth justice refocus its attention on the rights and perspectives of young people in transition? Foundations for Youth Justice outlines youth justice practices in their current state of flux in the United Kingdom as New Labour policies receive direction under the vastly different Coalition Government. Anne Robinson explores opportunities for a fresh orientation that places young people at the center. She outlines the risks and problems that modern society creates for them and asks when, and how, society should respond to youth behaviors that cause harm to others. The result is a bold—and realistic—remodelling of youth justice practices.
