Youth Justice Family Group Conferences: Do Restorative Measures Prevent Re-Offending?
| Author | Dr Nikki McKenzie |
| Pages | 37-54 |
36
Youth Justice Family Group Conferences: Do Restorative Measures Prevent Re-Offending
37
YOUTH JUSTICE FAMILY GROUP
CONFERENCES: DO RESTORATIVE
MEASURES PREVENT RE-
OFFENDING?
Dr Nikki McKenzie, Senior Lecturer, University of the West of England
Abstract
With the introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) in the UK, a shift in policy
and in turn a developing interest in restorative programmes as a means of preventing
youth offending and reducing recidivism was seen. This paper will draw upon the findings
of the evaluation of the Hampshire Youth Justice Family Group Conference Project. It
will examine issues around process; the extent that participants felt that the young person
took responsibility for his/her actions, paid reparation to the victim/community and was
reintegrated into their family/society. Finally it will discuss whether this type of restorative
intervention is successful in reducing recidivism.
Background
For more than 300 years there has been a concern and fear over the state of juvenile
delinquency. Society has gone from seeing children as ‘innocent angels’ to ‘demons or
devils’. In 1816, as fears that young people were out of control escalated, the Society for
Investigating the Alarming Increase of Juvenile Delinquency in the Metropolis published a
report that would explain the rise in juvenile crime (Goldson, 2000). The report found
that there were three principal ‘causes’; the want of education, the want of employment
and inadequate parenting, and two further ‘auxiliary causes’; ‘defective’ policing and the
‘over-severity’ of the criminal code for children, which were responsible for the youth
offending. However, it is recorded that the fear of crime at the time was the product of
middle class irrationality and based upon unreliable crime statistics (Goldson, 2000;
Brown, 1998).
In the UK today very little has changed, as the underlying causes of youth offending are
found to be not dissimilar to those of nearly two hundred years ago: poor education,
inadequate parenting and socio-economic deprivation (Farrington, 1989). What also has
changed very little are the approach and intrigue that young people and delinquency
create, as Muncie states:
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