The View From the Cliff Edge: Patrolling the Juvenile-Adult Age Boundary
| Author | Nigel Stone |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225419864728 |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Commentary |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225419864728
Youth Justice
2019, Vol. 19(2) 158 –169
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225419864728
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The View From the Cliff Edge:
Patrolling the Juvenile-Adult
Age Boundary
Nigel Stone
The classic and central focus for students and practitioners of youth justice rests on young
persons who offend and are then convicted and sentenced while remaining juveniles. Age
boundary transitions can occur within that continuum, but the application of law and prin-
ciple becomes more complex in the not infrequent instance when the offender has ceased
to be a juvenile by time of trial and disposal. Further, what is the residual relevance of
youth justice principles when the young person had ceased to be a juvenile shortly before
their offending? This Commentary seeks to revisit these familiar themes in respect of the
cusp between youth and young adulthood in light of recent pertinent judgements of the
Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) in England and Wales, building upon developments
over the past decade.
During that span, an initial definitive guideline was published setting out Overarching
Principles: Sentencing Youths (Sentencing Guidelines Council, 2009, ‘applying to the
sentencing of offenders on or after 30 November 2009’), succeeded by Sentencing
Children and Young People (Sentencing Council (SC), 2017), applicable ‘to all children
or young people, who are sentenced on or after 1 June 2017, regardless of the date of
the offence’. The 2017 guideline specifically states (Section 6.2) that where the defend-
ant has crossed a significant age threshold between date of offence commission and date
of finding of guilt, though the sentencer will be required by statute to take into account
the mandatory statutory provision pertaining to the five purposes of adult sentencing
(Criminal Justice Act 2003 (CJA) 2003 s.142(1) to which courts must have regard,
including the reduction of crime ‘by deterrence’1), the court ‘should take as its starting
point the sentence likely to have been imposed on the date at which the offence was
committed’.
Corresponding author:
Nigel Stone, School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, Lawrence Stenhouse Building, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.
Email: n.stone@uea.ac.uk
864728YJJ0010.1177/1473225419864728Youth JusticeStone
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