What Do We Want? The ‘SHAPE’ Campaign and the Reform of Youth Justice
| Author | John Pitts |
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/147322540300300302 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
of Youth Justice1
John Pitts
Correspondence: Professor John Pitts, The Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime,
University of Luton, Park Square, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1 3JU.
Email: john.pitts4Vbtopenworld.com
Abstract
This paper considers how the stated objectives of the recently launched SHAPE campaign
to reform youth justice in England and Wales might be concretised, and its strategy
refined, in the light of recent research evidence and the present government’s political
imperatives and administrative priorities.
Introduction
The 28th July 2003 saw the launch of ‘SHAPE (Children’s Lives and the Youth Crime
Debate)’. Backed by a consortium of four major UK children’s charities2, the National
Children’s Bureau and Nacro, and supported by an Esmee Fairbairn Foundation
initiative – Rethinking Crime and Punishment – SHAPE aims to correct popular
misapprehensions about the nature of youth crime and promote alternative,
‘child-centred’, responses to children and young people in trouble. The launch was
chaired by the dissident Labour peer Helena Kennedy and supported by front-bench
spokespersons from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. As such, SHAPE
represents the most politically powerful and coherent coalition to have challenged New
Labour’s policies in the area of youth crime in England and Wales thus far.
Why SHAPE, Why Now?
The major precipitating factor in the emergence of SHAPE is the unprecedented, and
apparently unstoppable, rise in custodial and secure confinement of child and
adolescent offenders in England and Wales through the 1990s and into the 21st
century, a rise which has steepened sharply under New Labour, and the growing
discrepancy between the standards set for the system by the government, in terms of
children’s and human rights, and the reality.
Most Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) are under-funded, overcrowded and
poorly managed (Goldson and Peters, 2000). It is estimated that, even in the better
institutions, only 30 per cent of young prisoners receive education. At Feltham Young
Offenders Institution in 2002, only 10 per cent of inmates were attending education
classes despite the fact that in the system generally, 54 per cent of inmates score below
level one (GCSE standard) in reading ability. Sir David Ramsbotham, the recently
1 This article is a developed version of a paper presented at the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control
Conference in Helsinki, Finland, September 2003.
2 NSPCC, Barnardo’s, NCH Action for Children, The Children’s Society.
Youth Justice Vol. 3 No. 3
135
retired Chief Inspector of Prisons, found that over 50 per cent of young prisoners on
remand, and 30 per cent of those serving a sentence, have a diagnosable mental health
problem. These problems are compounded by widespread drug abuse, violence and
intimidation. Self-harm is at record levels. In the past 10 years 22 boys aged 15–17 have
taken their own lives in YOIs in England and Wales and one has been killed by a
cell-mate. Among 18–20 year olds, the figure for successful suicide attempts during the
period is 65. Sir David Ramsbotham’s report on Feltham YOI noted that ‘the boredom
and isolation of spending long hours in cell was overwhelming’ the regime there was,
he said, ‘rotten to the core’. More perplexingly, the expansion and deterioration of the
‘juvenile secure estate’ has occurred during a period in which recorded youth crime has
fallen by around 20 per cent (Bateman, 2003).
Most commentators are agreed that burgeoning youth custody in the UK is, first
and foremost, a product of the populist legal and administrative changes introduced by
successive governments in the 1990s (Young, 1999; Garland, 2001; Goldson, 2002;
Pitts, 2003). Prior to 1992, youth justice in England and Wales was organised around
the principle that, in order to minimise stigma and avoid the demonstrably deleterious
effects of involvement in the criminal justice system, wherever possible less serious
young offenders should be diverted out of the system and more serious ones should
be placed in community-based alternatives to custody. The blizzard of youth justice
legislation introduced by Home Secretaries Howard, Straw and Blunkett since 1992,
however, proceeds from the very different premise that early exposure to the youth
justice system and a taste of incarceration can have long-term deterrent and
rehabilitative effects. Whether this is in fact the case is the subject of continuing debate
(Kemp et al., 2002). What is clear however is that this changed strategy has drawn
around 30 per cent more children and adolescents into the youth justice system, many
of whom are younger and have committed fewer, less serious, offences than those
entering the system a decade ago. This ‘overreach’ appears, moreover, to have had the
effect of propelling more of them into security or custody (Kemp et al., 2002; Pitts,
2003).
The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 extended the powers of Youth Courts to remand
children and young people into secure and penal establishments. It also effectively
repealed the Certified Specified Activity Requirement’, that required magistrates to
demonstrate that an alternative to a custodial sentence would not offer sufficient
control and containment and a greater prospect of rehabilitation than a custodial
sentence. In June 2001, the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill (2000) introduced
a de facto ‘one-strike and out’ condition for juveniles who breached a court order and
in 2001, the ‘three strikes’ sentencing strategy for repeat juvenile offenders, introduced
by Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard in 1994, was enshrined in law.
Meanwhile, the ‘fast-tracking’ of persistent and/or serious young offenders through the
courts has fuelled this custodial bonanza.
In 1998, responsibility for transforming the ‘juvenile secure estate’ into a coherent
system with ‘a structured and caring environment’, that ‘addresses the individual needs
and welfare of the young people and the risk of harm they pose to themselves’, and
which ‘reduces offending behaviour’ (Youth Justice Taskforce, 1998) was handed to
the newly constituted Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB). If, in the
136
What Do We Want? The ‘SHAPE’ Campaign and the Reform of Youth Justice
intervening period, the population of juvenile secure and custodial institutions had
fallen, or even remained the same, the YJB might have stood a chance of achieving its
objectives. As it is, the YJB has presided over a ballooning system.
SHAPE’s Analysis
Clearly, SHAPE wishes to open up the debate about youth crime and justice but it also
appears to have a view about the nature of the problem as well as its own preferred
solutions. Unsurprisingly, as a new campaigning consortium entering a complex field,
SHAPE’s ‘messages’ are not always consistent but its key messages, derived from
SHAPE’s publicity material and the public utterances of its board members, appear to
be the following:
( The majority of young people don’t commit crime.
( We are locking up too many children; custody should be a last resort.
( The increased incarceration of juveniles is a product of moral panics initiated by the
media which harden public attitudes and place pressure upon government to act in
order to retain its credibility.
( We need to support community penalties that work.
( Recorded crime has dropped 20 per cent between 1991 and 2001.
( Dealing with the causes of child neglect and abuse will help to address the causes
of crime; the problem of youth crime is primarily a problem of social and
psychological deprivation.
In what follows, I shall interrogate these messages in an attempt to unearth the
questions and issues they raise.
‘The majority of young people don’t commit crime’
The first problem with this message is that it is untrue. Belson’s classic 1977 study of
1,400 London schoolboys produced a rate of ‘stealing by finding’ of 98 per cent and
‘stealing from shops’ of 70 per cent. Similarly, Rutter and Giller’s (1983) summary of
youth self-report delinquency studies produced a 70 per cent rate for theft from shops.
Two thirds of 1,150 11–15 year olds surveyed by Anderson and his colleagues in
Edinburgh (1994) admitted committing a criminal offence in the preceding nine
months. Graham and Bowling (1995) reported similar rates of offending but showed
that involvement in crime is usually episodic, short-lived and trivial and that only a
small minority of young people went on to become serious, chronic or persistent
offenders.
Thus, the weight of evidence suggests that offending by children and young people
is a normal part of growing up. A recognition of this fact is important because it steers
us away from a concentration upon the alleged peculiarities of a ‘delinquent’ minority
towards an acknowledgement that young offenders are ‘our’ children, rather than the
progeny of some atavistic underclass. Such an acknowledgement asks us to focus
instead on the personal, familial, economic, social, cultural and administrative factors
which mean that a minority of young people fail to ‘grow out of crime’ (Rutherford,
1986) and become embedded instead in ‘criminal careers’ (Hagan, 1993).
Youth Justice Vol. 3 No. 3
137
We are locking up too many children and young people; custody
should be a last resort
The assertion that ‘We are locking up too many children and young people’ begs the
question, ‘How many should we be locking up?’ which is, more or less unanswerable.
One suspects that, in reality, many in the SHAPE...
To continue reading
Request your trial