Pre Existing Strategies For Youth Offending

Pre Existing Strategies For juvenility OffendingFor over a decade mashs three successive administrations from 1997 to 2010 has left the early days judge placement in a state of near permanent tame. With almost both decades forward to 1997 in opposition Labour had the opportunity to implement off-the-peg polices on outlaw umpire which started with the younker justice carcass by adopting a root and branch reform agenda.2This stem will critically review the policies pursued by Governments over the prehistoric fourteen eld to address the hearty ca drops of shame amongst unripened people. The primary question this melodic theme will ask is whether these policies have made a difference to each crime figures or recidivism amongst lates. The paper will initially begin by discussing the pre-existing strategies on callowness crime employ before the ratiocination fourteen years which is crucial to critically reviewing the laws development over the last(prenominal) fou rteen years. The second part of this paper will focus on the strategies employed to deal with the social causes of juvenility crime. The final section of the paper will draw the paper together by discussing the impact of the strategies employed by the unlike Governments to deal and manage offspring justice anger by examining their impact upon spring chicken pique.Pre-Existing Strategies for young Offending more than of the twentieth-century early daysful justice dodging was characterised by a reprize taxonomy which tail assembly be best described as penalization and wellbeing.3The last litre years have seen a bewildering complexity of sackings in the hail of the police, courts and various governmental agencies established to respond to jejuneness offending and the social causes of crime.4It has been a dissected mix of governmental policies that alternate between punitive penalty and a welf atomic number 18 or care admission. The literature presents the 1960s as a high point in the development of welfarism in the youth justice system with a discharge a vogue from penal punishment to family councils and family courts to deal with juvenile offending and the environ social causes of youth crime.5The plan of attack to power of the Conservative government in the 1970s brought a shift back to punitive punishment for youth wrongdoers with an increasing use of juvenile courts with custodial sentences rising from 3000 in 1970 to over 7000 in 1978.6Alongside this shift towards a strong sharp punishment of youth offending in England and Wales, Scotland sought to introduce an alternative approach with the insertion of the Social cut back (Scotland) Act 1968. An underlying feature of this approach to youth offending were welfare tribunals which used lay people such as social workers, teachers and family representatives in coming together to manage youth offending in a collaborative way to tackle both the wider social causes of youth offending and th e individual offence under consideration.Pratt argues that there were four major sets of criticisms of the welfare model of youth justice firstly the treatment-orientated discourses were perceived to be ineffective.7Secondly, register suggested that care could find more coercive than punishment. Thirdly, professional expertise of the members of the tribunals was little important than it was perceived to be, in that members were serving with little experience of juvenile offending. Fourthly, the care model of justice was alleged to be ineffective at dealing with youth delinquency. The election of the Conservative government during the mid-eighties with a law and order agenda produced a combine approach to youth offending yet again.8The 1980s brought an introduction of a multi-agency approach to youth offending and the social causes of crime, with an increased use of formal and informal cautioning of youth offenders which distinguished first offenders from repeat offenders. A d istinctive feature of this approach to youth offending was the introduction of the concept of corporatism into the youth justice system which allowed a system to produce efficient, effective justice that worked.9The focus was on delivering a youth justice framework that worked efficiently delivering value for specie for the government using cheaper alternatives than the court system. The youth justice model of the 1980s enjoined the 1990s with a marriage of punitive sentencing of repeat offenders with an incoherent cautioning system for first time youth offenders which the police patrolled without any consistency.10 upstart Labour, New callowness Justice Police?It is arguable that, amongst other issues, Labour won its first general election under the banner of its tough lecturing on criminal justice issues.11By taking a mixed approach between retri besidesive justice and pop justice Labour sought to increase the States control, regulation and mangerialism of criminal behavior a nd the social causes surrounding crime.12Labour sought to formulate its youth justice policies around a development of pre-existing philosophies of keynote justice determine and practice including responsibility, indemnification and reintegration, which would draw upon the experience of the existing framework.13Labour presented a Third way to deal with law and order which magnetic cored upon tackling the youth crime which were premised upon making young people take responsibility for crime through the concepts of responsibility, restoration and reintegration.14The centre piece of reform manifested itself in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 which have sought to fuck off invigorating elements and values on a formal platform at bottom youth justice.15In essence the statutory framework represented a clear attempt at modernising youth justice based on empirical evidence.16The reform advanced by Labour to deal with the social causes o f youth offending effectively represented a spick-and-span youth justice system composed of a Youth Justice shape up (YJB) at national level and a multi-agency Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) at topical anesthetic level to administer the youth justice framework.17This multi-level and multi-agency approach to youth justice redefined the architecture of the youth justice apparatus by reconfiguring the lines of power, direction and responsibility.18In addition to redefining the youth justice apparatus within the criminal justice system, Labour adopted a twin track approach with a perpetual stream of legislative reform focused on reformulating the punishment framework within criminal justice.The main stay of the reforms was provided in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which established the Youth Justice Board, Youth Offending Teams and for a restructuring of the non-custodial penalties available to the Youth Court, other reforms included anti-social behaviour orders (ASBO) and accompl ish plans, to reparation orders and parenting orders.19For offenders under 18, the system of police cautioning was replaced with a new system of reprimand and warnings, to allow young offenders to have the opportunity of at least one reprimand and one final warning prior to prosecution.20Newburn argues that the new reforms implemented sought to allow soda values where achievable within youth justice through the development of restorative cautioning, action plans and reparation orders.21The action plan represented an attempt to allow youth offenders to begin a short intensive programme of community intervention combining punishment, rehabilitation and reparation to change the offending behaviour and celebrate further crime.22Although Labour sought to redraw the criminal justice agenda many an(prenominal) of the reforms introduced echoed and resembled the multi-agency approach of the 1980s.23The crucial difference between this fresh attempt at reform was that part of the multi-age ncy approach this time was not to divert but rather to intervene and become involved in the process.24A fundamental driving force in Labours restorative reforms was the influence of communitarian thinking, particularly with the introduction of reparation orders and restorative cautioning.25The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 placed local authorities with the responsibility of formulating and implementing annual youth justice plans which dealt with the social causes of crime amongst other priorities.Gelsthorpe and Morris argue that the reforms introduced will allow restorative processes to occupy a marginal place within criminal justice until contradictory values and practices of blaming and punishing are given operatively less emphasis and restorative values and practices are given significantly more emphasis.26A say-so flaw of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 presented in the literature is that significant elements inherent in the reforms are premised on the basis of proportionality which is diagnostic of punitive punishment. Wasik identifies that the reparation order is subjected to the normal requirements of proportionality which is linked to the retributory justice value of responsibility of the offender for the crime.27The central concern among advocates of restorative justice is that this model will not operate with the full say-so of restorative justice values and principles which could over time gradually become more punitive than restorative in nature.Much of the debate end-to-end the literature focuses on the various elements of the reforms which can be considered to have restorative ideals.28The most significant reform was the introduction of Referral Orders as part of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. Dignan and Marsh argue that Referral Orders are potentially one of the most radical aspects of the entire youth justice reform agenda where the court can divert the young offender away from the courts system to deal with the offendin g behaviour through restorative approaches.29Crawford and Newburn argue that the reforms implemented by Labour were heavily influenced by the what deeds paradigm and the language of risk factors.30ConclusionGoldson argues that Labour introduced an unprecedented principal sum of youth justice legislation both in terms of collide with and volume.31Fergusson argues that the approach to youth offending became a melting pot of contradictions, ideals and ideologies where a hybrid model emerges which encompasses a dissected mix of restorative and retributive values.32Fergusson correctly identifies that the way governments present policy rhetorically, how they codify it legally, and how those policies are compete out in practice are critically different facets of the policy process in the management of crime.33Successive governments have responded to the social causes of youth crime in various ways throughout the last fiver decades, in particular the latest strategy employed a double edged sword which leans heavily on punitive punishment for with child(p) offenders with a more welfarist approach in dealing with youth offenders.34Restorative justice undoubtedly represents one of the most significant developments in criminal justice and criminological practice and thinking over the past two decades.35It is arguably the social movement for criminal justice reform of the 1990s and into the new millennium.36Empirical evidence emanating from America, Australia and New Zealand indicate that where the use of restorative justice is prevalent for young offenders, there has been success at reducing youth offending rates and a reduction in repeat offending resulting in greater effectiveness at dealing with youth crime and the social causes of crime.37The net effect of these new policies aimed at the reduction of youth crime and tackling the social causes of crime represent a more integrated approach by the state to manage youth offending rates. The policies acknowledge th e failures of the previous strategies of strict punitive punishment as a deterrent for further offences. The approach of incorporating restorative values, although arguable only at the fringes of the youth justice system, represents a more inclusive justice system which takes into account mechanisms to address the social causes of youth offending.