Incarcerating Young People: An Anglo-Finnish Comparison
| Author | John Pitts,Tarja Kuula |
| DOI | 10.1177/147322540500500302 |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Incarcerating Young People: An Anglo-Finnish Comparison
John Pitts and Tarja Kuula
Correspondence: Professor John Pitts, The Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime,
University of Luton, Park Square, Luton, Bedfordshire LUI 3JU, UK.
Email: john.pittsVluton.ac.uk
Abstract
Burgeoning youth incarceration and high reconviction rates in England and Wales have
prompted a search for alternative responses. This has led to a renewed interest in other
youth justice systems which appear to incarcerate fewer children and young people. Not
surprisingly, Finland with the lowest rate of youth imprisonment and one of the lowest
crime rates in Europe, has become a focus of attention. The research upon which this
article is based set out to discover how, if Finnish youth incarceration rates are so low, the
Finns respond to their most troubled and troublesome children and young people. The
results of this investigation have proved paradoxical.
Introduction
When in office, UK Home Secretary, Jack Straw, described the Crime and Disorder Act
1998 as the most radical shake-up of youth justice in 30 years. The Act epitomised the
New Labour project, embodying ideas from across the political spectrum and attesting
to New Labour’s new-found ‘toughness’. The ‘new youth justice’(Goldson, 2000)
introduced by the 1998 Act mark a reaction against both the welfare orientated
innovations of the 1960s and 1970s and the diversionary measures of the 1980s. One of
the consequences of these changes has been a huge increase in youth incarceration in
England and Wales in the past decade (Bateman, 2005; Goldson, 2002; Hagell, 2005),
raising concerns within government and beyond about the manageability of the ‘juvenile
secure estate’. This has prompted both progressives and pragmatists to search for ways
of forestalling the impending crisis. This search has led to both the ‘rediscovery’of
diversion and a renewed interest in the youth justice systems of other countries and, in
particular, those which ‘lock-up’fewer children and young people (Muncie and
Goldson, 2006). Pro rata, England and Wales appears to incarcerate four times more
juveniles than France, ten times more than Spain and, most startlingly of all, between 75
and 100 times more than Finland, a country with one of the lowest crime rates in
Europe (Bateman, 2005). Not surprisingly then, Finland has become a key point of
reference for ‘progressive minimalists’(Currie, 1985) who argue that the message from
the Finnish experience is that the use of youth custody could be reduced dramatically in
England and Wales without affecting crime rates. It was in order to learn more about
the elements of Finnish policy and practice which might inform future developments in
England and Wales that, in 2003, an Anglo-Finnish research team embarked upon a
comparative study of the English and Finnish youth justice systems.
1
1
This research is being undertaken by the University of Luton’s Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime in collaboration with
HUMAK, Finland’s largest youth work training agency, the University of Kuopio’s Faculty of Social Science and the Nacro Youth
Crime Section. The first phase of this research, reported on here, was funded by the Esmee Fairburn Foundation and HUMAK.
The Finnish Experience
In August 2002 in Finland, only two juveniles were serving custodial sentences and a
further eight were held on remand (Kuure, 2002). Finland is remarkable not only
because it currently imprisons so few children and young people in trouble but also
because, over the past 40 years, it has effected a sustained reduction in its penal
population (Lappi-Seppalä, 1998, 2006). Nils Christie (2000) has argued that the
impetus for this reforming project derives from the desire of successive Finnish
governments to distance themselves from the Soviet bloc, with which they were once
closely associated, and to formulate a national identity more akin to that of other
Scandinavian and Nordic states. This has meant that, in the sphere of crime and justice,
Finland has tended to emulate the policies and practices of its Scandinavian and Nordic
neighbours following the precept that good social development policy is the best
criminal justice policy (Christie, 2000).
In 1950, Finland had the highest levels of youth and adult incarceration in the
Nordic countries, at 190 per 100,000 of the population compared with between 30 and
60 per 100,000 in Norway, Sweden and Iceland. By 1990, at just over 60 per 100,000
the Finnish rate had reverted to the Nordic norm where it has since remained (Kuure,
2002). This reduction was not related to a drop in the crime rate; in fact between 1950
and 1995 the crime rate in Finland rose from around 2000 crimes per 100,000 of the
population to 7,000 per 100,000. Interestingly, Sweden and Denmark saw a bigger rise
in recorded crime to around 11,000 per 100,000 and 10,000 per 100,000 respectively.
Today, Finland faces significant social changes that have had an impact on the nature
of youth crime. It has a growing population of, relatively impoverished, asylum seekers
and economic migrants –a second generation of ‘Russian Finns’whose parents opted
to move to Finland following the collapse of the USSR –a relatively small but growing
drink/drugs problem, growing racial conflict and a growing ‘gang problem’(Puuronen,
2001). However, these developments have not led to calls from politicians, the media
or the ‘public’for tougher penalties. Indeed, across the political spectrum, confidence
in the non-custodial orientation of the present system appears to be high (Kuure, 2002).
Tapio Lappi-Seppälä(1998, 2001, 2006) has identified five factors which have
enabled Finnish governments to sustain its penal reforms:
1. Political embarrassment, political will and administrative consensus
In the 1970s and 1980s politicians became increasingly embarrassed by Finland’s
internationally high custody rates and, as a result, supported the consensus amongst
scholars, the judiciary and the civil service that it would be possible to significantly
reduce the amount and length of prison sentences without serious repercussions on
the crime situation.
2. The system’s expert orientation
In Finland, penal reform has traditionally been the province of a relatively small group
of professional and academic criminal policy experts. This group has maintained close
links with successive Ministers of Justice some of whom have themselves been
criminologists and social researchers. This has meant that criminal justice policy has
Incarcerating Young People: An Anglo-Finnish Comparison148
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