Experiences of Youth Justice: Youth Justice Discourses and Their Multiple Effects

Risk, responsibilization and rights: Multiple and contradictory discourses

Contemporary youth justice involves multiple modes and layers of governance (Muncie, 2006). Recent initiatives focused on the prevention of offending through risk management illustrate the multiple and contradictory rationales within youth justice policy. Risk identification and management are premised on the basis of managing risk through intervening early in the lives of those displaying risk factors (Case, 2006). While early intervention programmes are presented as a benefit to the child and society, their welfare and rights-based ethos has been questioned (see Haydon in this issue).

In line with neo-liberal governance and the risk management agenda, a key element of contemporary youth justice is responsibilization (Phoenix and Kelly, 2013). Here the young offender is considered a ‘rational, responsible decision maker …’ (Gray, 2005: 938). The philosophical principles of restorative justice have married well with the responsibilization agenda (Gray, 2005), because restorative justice emphasizes an acknowledgement by the young person of the harm done. The focus on restoration and reintegration, however, also reflects the welfare discourse. Thus restorative justice can embody some of the tensions between welfare and justice − holding young people to account but with a view towards them reintegrating into law-abiding society.

Research into young people’s experiences of restorative justice has highlighted some of these tensions (Crawford and Newburn, 2003; Newbury, 2008). The range of interventions that often constitute restorative practices are individually focused, concentrating on the attitudes and behaviours of young people rather than the structural conditions of their lives (Gray, 2005). Newbury’s (2008) analysis challenges the reintegrative functions of restorative justice, noting that behaviour is unlikely to change if young people feel they must accept responsibility despite mitigating factors and broader explanations.

Further demonstrating the tension between welfare and justice, restorative justice is embedded in the language of inclusion, participation and rights. Particularly suited to young people due to its ‘informal’ and sometimes diversionary nature, it incorporates the rights and views of victims and young people (e.g. Articles 12 and 40 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)). Yet restorative justice can be experienced as punitive, exclusionary and shaming (Daly, 2002; Eliaerts and Dumortier, 2002). Concerns have also been raised regarding procedural safeguards in a forum where legal representation is absent (Eliaerts and Dumortier, 2002). While some research demonstrates relatively high levels of ‘engagement’ and participation by young people (e.g. Crawford and Newburn, 2003), this engagement and the levels of understanding of some has been questioned (Newbury, 2008). Whether young people feel they have a choice about engaging in the process, accepting responsibility and the resulting outcome is also debated (Hudson, 2003; O’Mahony and Campbell, 2006).

In sum, multiple, competing and contradictory discourses are reflected to different degrees in youth justice systems and interventions. While this is acknowledged, how these discourses play out and more fundamentally how they are experienced by young people is less clear. This article, based on research with young people who have encountered a broad range of youth justice interventions examines their experiences of ‘justice’. Through their narratives we consider how different discourses might influence the same intervention and how the deployment of multiple rationalities gives the experiences of ‘justice’ its effect.

Restorative justice

Based on restorative justice principles, the purpose of the youth conference as outlined in guidance for young people is to: ⁴

… give you a chance to tell the people at the meeting why you committed the offence. It gives the victim a chance to tell you how they have been affected by what you did to him or her.… The meeting will want you to: …. Agree an action plan to make up for what you have done and stop offending.

Young people reported variable experiences of this process. For some, conferencing, or at least what they were required to do for their conference plan, provided some structure in their lives. Kyle, who was on remand for a serious violent offence and who had multiple previous offences, explained how the activities required under his conference plans provided him with something to fill his time:

It is noteworthy that it was not the content of the programmes that Kyle identified as useful, or the conference itself, rather that the plan provided him with purposeful activity.

At the time of his initial interview, Kevin was serving his first custodial sentence for involvement in riotous behaviour. He had previous convictions for similar offences and had been through the youth conference process. His account of some of the requirements of his conference plan provides an example of having to confront the impacts of his offending. On this occasion Kevin describes visiting a residence to hear about the impact of rioting on those living there:

… because I was rioting outside an ‘aul (old) people’s home, I went up… and I writ them a letter saying I was sorry, and then I went up telling them I was all sorry. And then they took me on a wee tour around the place… I felt alright saying sorry, but I felt like an asshole for rioting outside their place, so I did…. It made me feel a bit lousy on them and all because of how close it was… I went and met the manager, ‘cos they were saying – ‘how do you feel?’, and all. And I said – ‘I feel like a … dickhead’ and all that there. And I went around and said sorry and I was shaking people’s hands saying I was sorry for rioting outside and I writ them a letter….

This experience had a clear impact on Kevin. As he described it, meeting the residents of the home made him feel a sense of shame. The shaming element of restorative justice draws on the theory of ‘reintegrative shaming’ (Braithwaite, 1989), which contends that social disapproval impacts on how a person feels about their offence, ideally dissuading them from such behaviour in the future. A component of this approach, and an underlying premise of restorative justice, is that a reintegration or restoration takes place for the victim of the offence and for the offender (Harris, 2006). Thus, a distinction is drawn between reintegrative shaming – i.e. shaming that is respectful of the person, avoids labelling and ends with forgiveness – and stigmatizing shaming (Ahmed and Braithwaite, 2005).

While Kevin spoke about the salutary effect of this particular conference, he had subsequently been convicted of further rioting offences resulting in his current sentence. Sometimes explaining his behaviour in individual terns (defining himself as a ‘hood’), Kevin also described his feelings of boredom, the lack of things to do in his community and by contrast the excitement of rioting: ‘you get like an adrenaline rush so you do… it’s good’. Within the local context rioting has historically been a masculine form of cultural expression and resistance (Haydon et al., 2012). It can be seen, therefore, that despite restorative interventions the context and circumstances of Kevin’s life, continued to impact heavily on his offending behaviour.

For some young people, their experiences of conferences were more stigmatizing than reintegrative. Aged 15, and serving a sentence for a violent offence Paul had experience of multiple conferences. He recounted his first conference where the victim was antagonistic towards him:

I had to show remorse for what I’d done like… like for the different offences, like I was in a youth conference there ages ago for a burglary, it was one of my first offences, and I just got diverted to a youth conference because it wasn’t a serious burglary, you know. I had to sit in a room with the person from the shop and I had to sit there and just to listen to him and say sorry and all. He just sat there and gave me abuse basically, he was an English boy and he called me a ‘yob’ or something like that. I hadn’t a clue what that meant, I had to say – ‘what the fuck’s a yob like?’ And he says a ‘hood’ or something like that it is. And I said – ‘I’m no hood’.

Over time and following participation in further conferences, Paul describes ‘wising up’ and learning what is expected of him:

You know, that was me back in that time, and then going through youth justice and all, I started wising up a bit, started getting street smart you know instead of being stupid. Just all I had to do, all of the youth conferences, then after that I would have just sat there and said ‘sorry’. You know, just listening to them go on and on, [I] wouldn’t give a fuck. I would have sat there and said ‘sorry’ instead of arguing with them, you know what I mean? (Paul, age 15)

Clearly Paul had learnt to adapt his initial strategy of resistance, challenging and talking back, to one where he says the ‘sorry’ that is required of him. The inclusive and participatory nature of conferences was greatly questionable in Paul’s experience. Garrett (age 17) described a similar feeling of saying what is required:

…you just have to sit down, and basically pretend, or not pretend, say you’re sorry and look like you’re sorry and that’s it….

Part of the difficulty here arises from the over-simplified binary categorizations of ‘victim’ and ‘offender’, and for some the sense of injustice this arouses. Taking the moment, the interaction of the offence as the instance in which the young person (the ‘offender’) is held to account, and in which s/he must demonstrate remorse and accountability before the legitimate ‘victim’, belies the realities of many of the young people’s lives beyond these moments. For, Hugh (age 16), his life had been characterized by multiple losses and he described intense feelings of despair. Youth conferences where he had to account for behaviour that he could not fully recall because of alcohol use were particularly difficult:

… just like sitting there and listening, listening to like listening to everything that I did and ‘cos it was all alcohol and it was all I felt so shit about it like, so bad. And see like a few months down the line at that conference listening to it again like just… you know when the alcohol was on board I didn’t care and then a few months down the line I had the conference just hearing it all again it was just killer like.

Strategies of responsibilization ‘holding young people to account’ are evident from the official youth justice discourse and in young people’s own recounting of their experiences. Internalizing the message of the need to take responsibility and self-manage Hugh feels the responsibility to change, particularly in light of a further admission to custody, as resting firmly on his shoulders. Despite recognizing the harm done and feeling deep shame, Hugh recognized this was not enough:

I’d say if you asked… the conference worker well I wouldn’t really say it hit home much with where I am sitting (in custody) at the moment. It’s up to me to change it like.

While Morris (2002) cautions against a false binary between restorative and retributive justice or indeed pinning unrealistic expectations on restorative processes, here the challenges of restoration are apparent. While the focus of any conference is on the harm caused, the meaningfulness of restoration and reintegration particularly into families and communities from which young people feel alienated is raised in many of the young people’s accounts. Recognizing the harms caused by offending was not something young people typically shied away from, however, they recounted the responsibility for restoration as resting primarily on them. The contents of conference plans, perhaps reflecting the offending history of some, were at times expansive and onerous. Some noted the ‘stress’ that managing multiple conditions could cause and a few noted not agreeing with the outcomes even though they had accepted them. While few discussed the programmes they had to undertake in any manner that would suggest a rehabilitative effect, their value for providing something to do in otherwise monotonous lives is noteworthy in its own right. It speaks to the lack of opportunities for young people living in communities often beleaguered by poverty, under-investment and the legacies of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Experiences of custody

Paradoxically, but perhaps unsurprisingly given their life experiences and ongoing issues within their communities, for many young people detention was described as a period of respite. Having their needs met and the relative ‘ease’ of the JJC in comparison to life outside was evident:

Life is so easy in here. You have no worries about people looking for you, no worries about nothing. You have no worries about going hungry and getting food and things like that. (Robbie, aged 16)

Reference was made to the range of activities available in the Centre and the fact that there was a structure and routine to daily life:

It’s a gift. I don’t know, don’t worry about nothing like. Whatever you need is there… the food’s rotten though. There’s all sorts of activities you can do in it like. They show you options and everything you can do when you get out and all. (Patrick, age 17)

Anthony (aged 17) had been in and out of the JJC since the age of 11. He estimated that he had spent two years in detention between various remands and sentences. Using drugs for many years – ‘solvies and meth and coke, E’s everythin’ − for him the JJC offered an opportunity to detox:

I like it in here, it’s good…. Cos it’s kinda a detox centre, you just come in and get off all the drugs and all and get fit again. (Anthony, age 17)

Raising questions about the availability of appropriate services for young people in the community, like Anthony, Hugh had also experienced multiple admissions and the JJC was a place where he came off drugs. While ultimately he saw this as positive, this process was not without its pains:

It makes me feel, it’s like I try, and this place is sort of like a place where people come off things. This is hard, you have to come off things in her … it is not like you can turn round and say ‘give me something, give me cannabis, give me a smoke’. You can’t, you have to do it you have to come off them. And it is hard like… I have got these shakes sometimes I feel real not meself and but that’s why I do alternatives like go to the gym, do weights just take me mind of things really. Better than sitting smoking me brains out you know. (Hugh, age 16)

The experience of many young people was that the JJC met their welfare needs, underlining the fact that these were not being met elsewhere. In a number of interviews young people also noted the materiality of their surroundings in detention. Some who had come here for the first time reported that it did not meet their expectations of what a prison or place of detention would be − they had their own rooms and access to resources that were not necessarily available to them on the outside. This is not to suggest that young people did not want their freedom, and that there were not pains associated with confinement, but in many accounts the positive welfarist aspects of having their basic needs met, whilst at the same time desiring to be on the outside were noted.

For some, like Hugh the desire to be free in the literal sense and also from drugs was double-edged, because he was not sure if he would have somewhere to go on release or if he could sustain abstinence on the outside. The anticipation of rejection by his family who did not want him to return home permeated his account and while he desired to be free, the thought of what would happen to him on release was a source of anxiety:

I don’t have a problem with bein’ in here [custody] ‘cos, I don’t know, I guess you just get used to it after a few times. But then it’s just the fact that when you have bail you just have nowhere to live, it’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to ya. (Hugh, age 16)

Contact with families and friends on the outside was both a source of comfort and anxiety for many young people. Some young people worried about their families making the journey to visit them, they described looking forward to a visit but feeling down afterwards as this accentuated their experience of being confined and away from home. Because the JJC is the only place for detained young people in Northern Ireland many families have to make long journeys to get there. While the JJC has an accommodation unit, where families and visitors can stay overnight, young people were often conscious of the burden that their detention placed on their families. For Stevie, the impact of his mother visiting was known as he witnessed it first hand when his older brother was in prison:

… when [brother was in prison] me ma went up and down but she used to be stressed, she says ‘this is costing me a fortune’. Diesel and then needin’ fifty pound a time for buyin’ clothes and all that. I knew it was a nightmare like, that’s why I said ‘I’ll see you once I get out’, but she came up the last time and left me money and all….

For young people then, experiences of custody were both punitive in terms of the deprivation of liberty and all that entailed, but also welfarist in that they perceived their needs were being met where they were not elsewhere.