Editorial: Taking Stock of Youth Justice
| Author | Jean Hine |
The call for this special issue 'Taking Stock of Youth Justice' went out before the recent general election in the UK, when a range of possibilities for the future of youth justice could be seen in the policies of different political parties. Now the results are in and we have a Conservative government which will continue with plans begun whilst in coalition. Greater freedom of contact has been given to youth offending teams and antisocial behaviour orders have been abolished, but these have been replaced with a range of alternative options in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. Plans to build a large secure college for young offenders have been abandoned following opposition from the House of Lords, though the government spokesperson said the decision was due to the falling numbers of young people in prison. The £5.56 million reportedly wasted (BBC News, 2015) on this venture could have been better spent on improving the existing provision, such as to reduce the number of deaths of young people in custody, as recommended by the Harris Review (2015).
As is acknowledged widely, the number of young offenders convicted by the courts has fallen dramatically over the last few years, as has the number of young offenders in custody. The government unsurprisingly attributes that to its own policies, but a range of recent social and economic policies will impact disproportionately on young people, increasing their risk of involvement in criminal activity. Reductions in police numbers, and particularly in stop and search, may reduce this likelihood, but for those who do appear before the courts there is the introduction of criminal court charges. These will not affect youth courts, but they have raised concern amongst sentencers and lawyers about people's ability to pay (BBC News, 2015b). The media seem little interested in the fall in youth crime and continue to sensationalise particular and uncommon serious crimes by young people, such as the tragic murder of school teacher Ann Maguire.
Interestingly, around the same time as this call for papers, the government were also thinking about what next for youth justice and commissioned a review of the work of youth offending teams (Deloitte, 2015), perhaps the most important finding of which is:
'3.24. Indeed, the preliminary analysis suggests the strongest correlations with YJB measures are with socio-economic conditions and demographics - factors that YOTs cannot influence.' (p6)
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