Hearing new voices: Re-viewing Youth Justice Policy through Practitioners’ Relationships with Young People
| Author | Ross Fergusson,Damon B. Briggs,Deborah H. Drake |
| Published date | 01 April 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225413520360 |
| Date | 01 April 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
520360YJJ0010.1177/1473225413520360Youth JusticeDrake et al.
research-article2014
Article
Youth Justice
2014, Vol. 14(1) 22 –39
Hearing new voices: Re-viewing
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225413520360
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Practitioners’ Relationships with
Young People
Deborah H. Drake, Ross Fergusson and Damon B.
Briggs
Abstract
The relationship between young people and practitioners is the centrepiece of youth justice provision,
yet little research-based knowledge has accumulated on its minutiae. After reviewing reforms affecting
professional discretion, the article draws on the concepts of dyadic relationships and praxis to reinvigorate
a research agenda aimed at delineating a more nuanced understanding of practice relationships. Drawing on
practice wisdom from across related social work fields, we argue that centralizing the practitioner-young
person relationship remains the key to successful practice and thus needs greater, more detailed research
attention. These claims are supported with a number of pilot interviews with youth justice workers about
successful interventions that complement and extend related studies. The article concludes with suggestions
for research to enable joint activity between young people and practitioners to ‘rethink’ youth justice.
Keywords
dyadic relationships, practitioner–young person relations, youth voice
Introduction
Despite the almost perpetual state of change in youth justice policy, the practitioner–
young person relationship remains at the heart of youth justice practice (Burnett and
McNeill, 2005). As successive governments switch tactics to contain youth offending, and
strive to manage the widening field of social and economic problems faced by young
people using the criminal justice system, the centrality of that relationship becomes ever
clearer. Practice literature, across the related fields of youth justice, social work and pro-
bation often highlight its crucial importance (Annison et al., 2008; Barry, 2007; Farrow
Corresponding author:
Ross Fergusson, Department of Social Policy and Criminology, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA,
UK.
Email: ross.fergusson@open.ac.uk
Drake et al.
23
et al., 2007; Stephenson et al., 2007), with some youth justice studies focusing on the
particular ways practitioners engage young people and the importance of this relationship
(McNeill, 2006a, 2006b; McNeill and Maruna, 2008). Similarly, a few studies have cap-
tured the perspectives of marginalized young people inside and outside of the youth jus-
tice system (notably Barron, 2000; Sharpe, 2011). Yet the insights provided by these
studies have had limited impact on policy, and their implications are by no means univer-
sally or systematically embedded as ‘best practice’. As a result, there continue to be calls
in the academic literature to give greater power and voice to young people in research and
policy development processes (Case, 2006; Grover, 2004; Prior and Mason, 2010).
Young people’s subjective experiences of youth justice offer a way of understanding
young people as subjects within changing youth justice processes, rather than as objects
of study (Howard League for Penal Reform, 2011; James, 1993). Perhaps equally impor-
tant, young people’s accounts of their experiences can provide critical perspectives on the
successes and limitations of current policies and practices that are inherently unique and
prospectively illuminating. Some empirical work has illustrated the proven effectiveness
and potential for including youth perspectives in policy development (Milbourne, 2009a;
Mycock and Tonge, 2012).
Part of the framing focus of this article is the recognition of the importance of young
people’s experiences of the youth justice system. However, we suggest that young peo-
ple’s perspectives are sometimes difficult to interpret without the corresponding assess-
ments of the practitioners who can gloss their comments – albeit with a critical eye. Not
only do the perspectives of practitioners offer crucial reference points for interpreting
young people’s accounts, and vice versa, their status as co-determinants of the two-way
engagement between young person and provider has particular significance in the present
political conjuncture in the UK.
In what follows, we begin with a brief survey of recent government reforms of the
youth justice system, localization, professional discretion and the extent to which these
may open up potential for more productive young person-practitioner relations. We argue
that the current policy moment offers a rare research opportunity to engage in detailed
analysis of these relationships. Drawing on the concepts of dyadic relationships and
praxis, we illuminate the scope for greater insight that results from examining the
‘moments that matter’ to young people when they are working with professionals. We
suggest that facilitating replicable successes in redirecting the trajectories of young peo-
ple means maximizing the discretion of youth justice workers to hear and respond to
young people’s voices, and to ‘rethink’ aspects of practice that impair what can be heard
and acted upon. We argue that the road to better outcomes will begin from enhanced con-
fidence amongst policy makers and managers in the unique capability of the best
practitioner–young person relations. Our claims are variously illustrated and supported by
extracts from pilot interviews with a range of youth justice workers in one Youth Offending
Team (YOT), augmented by practice-based research literature. The article concludes by
suggesting that, to understand how young people experience youth justice and access
alternative futures (or fail to do so), a stronger evidence base is needed. This would pro-
vide data on the processes of mediation between young person and practitioner and on the
ways young people themselves might thereby help to ‘rethink’ youth justice.
24
Youth Justice 14(1)
The New Policy Context and Practitioner Discretion
The present conjuncture constitutes one of a now-lengthy series of critical moments in the
re-steering of youth justice policy and practice in England (Goldson, 2010; Muncie and
Hughes, 2002). The election of the coalition government and its Breaking the Cycle Green
Paper (Ministry of Justice, 2010) marked another shift in the political discourse and rheto-
ric. The Green Paper began in an ambitious tenor:
37. This is a radical and decentralizing reform. We will give providers the freedom to innovate,
increase their discretion to get the job done, and open up the market to new providers from the
private, voluntary and community sectors.
38. Professionals in the public, private, voluntary and community sectors will be given much
greater discretion and be paid according to the results they deliver in reducing reoffending.
By the time of the government response to the Green Paper, ambitions already appeared
considerably more modest. The word ‘discretion’ all but disappeared, and is never used in
relation to the youth justice service. The commitment became largely confined to two
undertakings:
33. … In the youth justice system, we will end the current high level of central performance
monitoring and develop a risk based monitoring programme…
35. The new approach will be based on the principles that youth justice services will be locally
determined and driven, maximize value for money, be publicly accountable through a Minister,
and be lighter-touch. We want to target those Youth Offending Teams that are underperforming
and free up the best performing teams to provide greater opportunity to innovate (Ministry of
Justice, 2011).
In November 2011 a proposal to abolish the Youth Justice Board (YJB) – the executive
public body which oversees the youth justice system in England and Wales – was stalled,
following opposition in the House of Lords. The Government responded by setting up a
Triennial Review of the YJB, to oversee its effectiveness. The review closed in February
2013 and has yet to report, but in the interim the YJB has continued to operate under
revised conditions. In 2012, this allowed the Ministry of Justice to revise the youth justice
standards. The year-long National Standards Trial was described by the renewed YJB as:
An opportunity to test and evaluate the impact of:
• Increasing opportunity for professional discretion in line with Justice Green Paper
recommendations;
• Increasing local freedoms and flexibilities;
• Delivery within the new environment of increased local accountability and local
determination. (Walker, 2012)
From the outset, in the briefing for Youth Offending Team Management Boards, an
‘increased sense of value for YOT staff and their professionalism’ is directly associated
Drake et al.
25
with ‘improved managerial oversight’ (Youth Justice Board, 2012a). In the briefing for
magistrates, assurances are offered that ‘Professional discretion does not mean compli-
ance will be relaxed’ (Youth Justice Board, 2012b). The number of relaxations of regula-
tory control is commensurately modest. The ONSET referral and assessment tool, used
for all young people deemed at risk of offending, remains recommended but the require-
ment to use it is diluted to ensuring that young people are only ‘formally assessed’. For
out of court disposals, ASSET, the standardized actuarial assessment tool used for all
young people that have offended,...
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