Applying Sen’s Capabilities Approach to the Delivery of Positive Youth Justice
| Author | Heddwen Daniel,Katherine S. Williams |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225420953208 |
| Published date | 01 April 2021 |
| Date | 01 April 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225420953208
Youth Justice
2021, Vol. 21(1) 90 –106
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225420953208
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Applying Sen’s Capabilities Approach
to the Delivery of Positive
Youth Justice
Katherine S. Williams
and Heddwen Daniel
Abstract
Since 2000 the Welsh Government’s (WG) policy has been to provide rights and entitlements to all children
in Wales. However, this is not fully implemented partly due to an underspecified meaning of ‘children first’
and ‘well-being’ and their role in relation to ‘justice’. We propose that clarity could be achieved through
a novel exploitation of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to achieving social justice. This would require
the identification and mitigation of socio-structural barriers which undermine the ability of a child to live a
positive life, a life where they can meet their full potential without harm to themselves or others.
Keywords
children first, making rights and entitlements ‘real’ for children, offenders second, positive youth justice,
Sen’s Capability Approach, supporting young people to reach their full potential
Introduction
Youth justice (YJ) practice in Wales cannot be understood in isolation from the context of
devolution. The devolution journey in Wales started under the Government of Wales Act
1998 which granted complex but limited powers to Wales. While the powers of the Welsh
Government (WG), formerly Welsh Assembly Government (WAG), have grown over
time the complexities of the devolution settlement remain. From the outset, policy-mak-
ing responsibilities for almost all child-related services were devolved – education, social
services, health and so on – and therefore some of the earliest new Welsh policy provi-
sions were in that area. For example, in 2000, Wales set up the first Children’s Commissioner
in the United Kingdom. Alongside this was a policy agenda to improve the lives of all
children in Wales which led to the introduction of both extended entitlements (WAG,
2000b, 2002a, 2002b, 2005) and a rights-led approach to working with children and young
Corresponding author:
Katherine S. Williams, Centre for Criminology, University of South Wales, Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan, CF37 1DL, Wales.
Email: kate.williams19@southwales.ac.uk
953208YJJ0010.1177/1473225420953208Youth JusticeWilliams and Daniel
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Williams and Daniel 91
people (Towler, 2006; WAG, 2000a, 2004, 2007; WG, 2009a, 2009b, 2011). These poli-
cies have been strengthened over time and have developed to encompass a specific aim to
improve children’s well-being (Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and
Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015) by guaranteeing both traditional benefits
such as health and education and also ‘softer’, less measurable, aspects of well-being such
as opportunities to play. The seminal work of Haines and Drakeford (1998) and the ‘proof
of concept’ research conducted in Swansea (Haines and Case, 2003, 2004) led to the
extension of social justice policy to all children, even those who offend under the ‘chil-
dren first, offenders second’ policy (Youth Justice Board (YJB) et al., 2004, 2014). This
policy was reinforced following further research by Haines and Case (2008, 2012), Haines
et al. (2013) and YJB et al. (2014). As a result, it was clear that the social justice–led
approach to working with children was intended to be universal in its application, inclu-
sive of those who offend.
From this it is clear that the WG grants children citizenship rights allowing children to
directly enjoy rights and entitlements (Clutton, 2007; Rights of the Children and Young
People (Wales) Measure 2011) and recognises that children who offend need support and
the chance to develop their autonomy and become pro-social citizens (Dixon and
Nussbaum, 2012; Hollingsworth, 2013).
Despite the child focused policy agenda children in Wales do not always enjoy their
full rights and not all YJ work is child friendly (Haines and Case, 2015; Smith, 2017;
Thomas, 2015). To date, the emphasis in delivering the rights, entitlements and well-being
agenda in Wales has focused on ‘objective’ well-being – outcomes and standards set by
the adults working in the system to enhance: tangible aspects of the child’s life (e.g. by
ensuring that they are receiving some form of education or training; YJB, 2006), their
health (see later Enhanced Case Management (ECM); Skuse and Matthew, 2015) and a
safe place to live (see Pierpoint and Hoolachan, 2019). These are important, objectively
measurable indicators of overall well-being, but they hide other equally important consid-
erations: namely, what children can actually do, what kind of a life they are able to live
and the broader objectives embraced by the Welsh well-being agenda which might be
effective in disrupting offending behaviours (Bateman et al., 2018; Johns et al., 2017).
These more subjective indicators of well-being require us to take account of the perspec-
tives and experiences of the children themselves, to achieve their desired outcomes. Doing
this will, we contend, enable ‘children first’ to be given substance and children’s ‘agency’
to be made real.
In this article, we use Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach to interpret and clarify ‘chil-
dren first’ policy in Wales and to highlight its underlying philosophy. A more detailed
account of the Welsh entitlements and rights policy follows, prior to an examination of Sen’s
work and how it can be exploited to help guide practitioners and policy-makers towards a
more holistic and nuanced understanding of well-being. By interpreting the rights and enti-
tlements policy through Sen’s theory, and applying that to YJ, practitioners will be better
able to achieve improved outcomes for children and their communities.
Wales is the context here because Sen’s social justice approach ensures the full realisa-
tion of its all-encompassing well-being, rights and child focused policy agenda. Clearly,
Sen could also be applied in other jurisdictions to enhance children first policy approaches.
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