The Central Institutions of Youth Justice: Government Bureaucracy and the Importance of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Author | Anna Souhami |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225414563594 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
Youth Justice
2015, Vol. 15(3) 209 –225
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225414563594
yjj.sagepub.com
The Central Institutions of Youth
Justice: Government Bureaucracy
and the Importance of the Youth
Justice Board for England and
Wales
Anna Souhami
Abstract
The government’s recent ‘bonfire of the quangos’ put at issue the future of the Youth Justice Board for
England and Wales (YJB). Drawing on research with YJB staff, ministers and civil servants, this article argues
a central body like the YJB is crucial for youth justice. The institutions of government bureaucracy are an
important part of the penal field in which policy is produced. An ‘arm’s length’ body outside the civil service
allows central decision making to be directed by expertise and child-centred principles. However, the same
features that make the YJB important also make it both high risk for ministers and difficult to defend.
Keywords
bureaucracy, England and Wales, government, policy, Youth Justice Board
Introduction
In 2010, the Coalition Government came into power promising to ‘restore democracy and
accountability to public life’ (Hansard 14 October 2010: Column 505). The landscape of
central government, it announced, had become cluttered by quangos. The delegation of
state activity to these ‘arm’s length’ bodies wasted public funds, allowed ministers to duck
responsibility for their policy areas and gave unelected officials ‘licence to meddle in
people’s lives’ (Hansard 14 October 2010). Declaring a ‘complete culture change in gov-
ernment’ (Hansard 14 October 2010: Column 506), under the Public Bodies Act (2011)
the government made provision to abolish or reform over 500 non-departmental public
bodies (NDPBs – the principal form of quango in the United Kingdom).
Corresponding author:
Anna Souhami, School of Law, University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, UK.
Email: anna.souhami@ed.ac.uk
563594YJJ0010.1177/1473225414563594Youth JusticeSouhami
research-article2014
Article
210 Youth Justice 15(3)
While ostentatious, the government’s reforms were ostensibly neither contentious – the
Coalition was merely the latest in a successive series of governments to declare a ‘bonfire
of the quangos’ (e.g. Gash and Rutter, 2011) – nor connected to any one policy area. Yet
the inclusion of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB) in its cull pulled the
central organisation of youth justice systems into the heart of political debate, bringing
into focus the importance of the nature of government institutions at their core.
Created as the cornerstone of the first New Labour administration’s sweeping youth
justice reforms under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the YJB is an executive NDPB
with responsibility for oversight of the English and Welsh youth justice system. It has a
broad and powerful range of statutory duties: it monitors the youth justice system, advises
the Secretary of State on its standards and operation, identifies effective practice across
youth justice services, commissions research and makes grants to local authority Youth
Offending Teams (YOTs) for services it deems effective, commissions places in the juve-
nile secure estate and places young people in custody.
As an NDPB, the YJB is located outside conventional government structures. While it
is ultimately accountable to the Secretary of State for Justice and ‘sponsored’ by the
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) who fund and audit it, it is not part of any government
department and its staff are not civil servants. It has permanence beyond any government
department with legislation required to establish and abolish it, and is accountable for its
daily operation not to a minister but to a Board and a Chief Executive. It therefore oper-
ates ‘on the fringes’ of central government (Pliatzky, 1992: 556), outside direct ministerial
control. It is the largest NDPB sponsored through the MoJ, currently with a staff of over
200 executive officials who are directed by a Board of 12 members, and a budget of
£255m (YJB, 2014).
The government argued that the size and political importance of the YJB’s functions
required them to be brought directly under ministerial control. The YJB would be abol-
ished and its functions transferred to a new Youth Justice Division within the MoJ. Like
the YJB, this new Division would have a Board of expert advisers and would be led in the
first instance by the then YJB Chief Executive John Drew (Hansard 23 June 2011: Column
28WS). In this way, the changes signified by the abolition of the YJB were ostensibly
simply a restructuring of government bureaucracy: The central administration of youth
justice would no longer be the responsibility of an NDPB but a departmental unit.
However, to the surprise of the government, this news was greeted with dismay across the
public sector and a vociferous rebellion in the House of Lords, putting at risk the
Government’s entire legislative agenda and resulting in a dramatic reprieve for the YJB
on the final reading of the Bill.
The fate of the YJB was met with little academic response, with some commentators
expressing uncertainty about its significance (e.g. Morgan, 2010; Puffett, 2011, though
see Souhami et al., 2012). Indeed, despite a powerful tradition of critical analysis of penal
policy in criminological research more generally, little attention has been paid to the insti-
tutions of central bureaucracy through which it is administered (for exceptions see Rock,
1995, 2004; on other areas of the civil service see Page, 2003; Page and Jenkins, 2005;
Stevens, 2011). However, drawing on research with senior YJB members, ministers and
civil servants, this article argues that the central organisation of youth justice systems is of
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