Professional Perspectives of Youth Justice Policy Implementation: Contextual and Coalface Challenges
| Author | JOHN DREW,STEPHEN CASE,KATHY HAMPSON,GARETH JONES,DUSTY KENNEDY |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12366 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
The Howard Journal Vol59 No 2. June 2020 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12366
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 214–232
Professional Perspectives of Youth
Justice Policy Implementation:
Contextual and Coalface Challenges
STEPHEN CASE , JOHN DREW, KATHY HAMPSON ,
GARETH JONES and DUSTY KENNEDY
Stephen Case is Professor of Criminology, Social and Policy Studies,
Loughborough University; John Drew is Senior Associate, Prison Reform
Trust; Kathy Hampson is Lecturer in Criminology, Department of Law and
Criminology, Aberystwyth University; Gareth Jones is Manager, Cheshire East,
Cheshire West, Halton and Warrington Youth Justice Services; Dusty Kennedy
is National Partnership Lead, Early Action Together Programme, Public
Health Wales
Abstract: This article offers a multilayered analysis of the subjective perspectives and
experiences of key youth justice stakeholders; exploring the inherent dynamism, contra-
diction, non-linearity, and contentiousness of youth justice policy implementation. We
interrogate how professionals make sense and meaning of policy in the real world and
how professional perspectives drive and shape their contributions to policy implementation
nationally and locally. Contemporaneously, these analyses enable us to critically examine
the caricatures, stereotypes, and assumptions that can (mis)inform common constructions,
representations, and understandings of youth justice policy trajectories, including those
relating to contextual stability, conceptual clarity, robust evidence bases, and purported
foundations in stakeholder consensus.
Keywords: coalface; context; implementation; policy; policymaking, profes-
sionals; youth justice
Despite their significance, there has been only limited critical engagement
with policymaking and implementation in the youth justice field, partic-
ularly with the ‘lived realities’ of the key stakeholders involved in policy
processes.1Social policymaking in the youth justice context is ‘a complex
arena of social practice, incorporating a diverse range of actors, practices,
relationships and networks’ (Souhami 2015, p.164). Despite its acknowl-
edged complexity, youth justice policymaking, understood as the processes
of establishing strategic direction, making decisions, and defining and iden-
tifying workable solutions to youth crime (Huckel Schneider and Blyth
214
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2020 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League
and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The Howard Journal Vol59 No 2. June 2020
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 214–232
2017), has been subjected to a degree of empirical scrutiny (cf. Goldson
and Hughes 2010; Souhami 2011, 2015). However, much less is known
about policy implementation – the animation of policymaking, strategy, and
guidance in practice contexts (often local) by key stakeholders working
with children and families in contact with the youth justice system (YJS).
Consequently, we have limited understanding of the drivers,debates,and
challenges of youth justice policy implementation. The aim of this article is to
make sense of the poorly-understood context of policy implementation in
youth justice in England and Wales by examining the interactions between
key stakeholders involved in implementation processes: the policymakers
working in the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (advising gov-
ernment and the Ministry of Justice on policy development issues), and the
practitioners working in local multi-agency youth offending teams (YOTs).
Our object of analysis, therefore, is policymaker-practitioner interactions,
with the overarching aim of understanding how policy2becomes youth jus-
tice practice in an environment where change is seldom linear,predictable,
or necessarily logical. For example, the trajectory of youth justice has been
characterised by shifting contexts of frequent, politically-driven and non-
linear policy debates regarding who should be the recipients of youth justice
(for example, the sporadic reconstruction of the minimum age of criminal
responsibility, extending the remit of youth justice prevention/early inter-
vention to younger age groups), how to deliver/implement youth justice (for
example, through a dominant focus on punishment, welfare, justice, diver-
sion, hybrid models) and what organisations and practices should lead and
contribute to this delivery/implementation (for example, police, probation,
social work, education, youth work, the church, the third sector). Taking
policy-practice interactions as the central object of analysis to explore the
drivers, debates, and challenges of youth justice policy implementation,
therefore, necessitates moving beyond analysing policy ‘products’ and into
an exploration of the processes and interactions through which policy is
constructed and implemented in the real world.
Methodology
In order to capture the sometimes contradictory and competing views
of different stakeholders, qualitative interviews were conducted with key
high-level policymakers/shapers who have worked in policy development
environments within and outwith the YJS of England and Wales, to elicit
their unique situated perspectives and experiences. This study pioneered
an innovative co-produced methodology by involving the research partic-
ipants with the process of producing the written output, through an iter-
ative discussion on the construction and interpretation of arising themes.
Two interviews were conducted with each participant (between mid-2018
and early 2019), which explored how differing perspectives are shaped
by the roles, responsibilities, occupational cultures and experiences of key
stakeholders, nationally and contextually. The output from these was ini-
tially constructed by two youth justice-focused critical realist academics,
and reflected back to the participants, allowing them to input directly into
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2020 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard
League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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