Abstract
Children in England and Wales Who Feel They Were ‘Treated Fairly’ by Their Youth Offending Team Are Significantly More Likely to Report Being Less Likely to Reoffend
The work of youth offending teams (YOTs) in England and Wales is inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation; the most recent programme of inspections commenced in 2012 and was completed in 2017. From 2014 onwards, the inspection process included the use of an anonymous online survey to capture the views of children in relation to their experiences of statutory supervision. An analysis of the findings from these self-reports was published by the Inspectorate in November 2018.
Over the 3-year period, a total of 14,542 surveys were returned by children through 154 YOTs. While the gender and ethnicity profiles of children responding were broadly similar to the national caseload, there were differences in terms of age, with those 17 years and over more likely to complete the survey. Children subject to a referral order (a ‘low tariff’ disposal that is a near mandatory penalty for children who plead guilty for a first time appearance in court but is also available for subsequent offending where a guilty plea is entered) were slightly overrepresented in the sample, and those subject to a youth rehabilitation order (YRO) (a higher tariff order available for offending that is ‘serious enough’ to warrant a ‘community sentence’) were correspondingly underrepresented. As a consequence, while the findings are of considerable value and interest, they cannot be considered to be necessarily representative of the views of all children subject to YOT supervision. A breakdown of responses by the characteristics of respondents is given in Table 1.
Survey responses by age range, gender and ethnicity.
The large majority of respondents – over 90 per cent in each case – indicated that:
they understood the requirements of their referral order contract or supervision plan;
where barriers existed that made their engagement more difficult, the YOT had helped to overcome them;
they had been adequately consulted as to the contents of the requirements of supervision; and
their views had been sought on what they thought would help them to stop offending.
When analysis took into account the age of respondents, however, differences emerged. Younger children reported being less likely to understand the terms of their orders than those in the oldest age range. The nature of reported barriers to participating in work with the YOT also varied according to age with 34 per cent of those in the 10 to 13 age range, indicating that their learning needs presented an obstacle compared to just 16 per cent of those aged 17 years or older. Conversely, 22 per cent of children in the highest age group cited where they lived as presenting a problem with engagement with the YOT compared to just 13 per cent of those in the youngest age bracket. In most cases, the latter difficulties pertained to problems associated with travel or distance from the YOT premises.
Girls were more likely than boys to indicate that there were aspects of attending the YOT that made them feel afraid or unsafe (15% against 9%). However, where such feelings were reported, boys were more likely than girls to have relayed those fears to YOT staff (81% males of those who had felt unsafe against 74% of females). Children with a self-reported disability were also more likely to have experienced being afraid or feeling a lack of safety than their peers who did not report a disability.
A large majority of children confirmed having received help across a broad range of self-identified needs, including, most commonly, assistance with education, training or employment, making better decisions or understanding how to stop offending. Children who identified that they had difficulties with financial issues or with their living arrangements were the least likely to say that they have been given the help they required.
There was, moreover, a strong association between children reporting an improvement against a specific type of need and indicating that they had received help from the YOT in relation to that issue. As shown in Table 2, children who said that the YOT had provided assistance with a particular need were at least twice as likely to report an improvement on that indicator.
Children reporting an improvement against selected indicators of need by whether or not they had received help from the YOT on that issue.
YOT: youth offending team.
Children were asked about their experiences of YOT intervention, and responses were overwhelmingly positive, with 95 per cent of those completing the survey indicating that the service provided by the YOT was good all or most of the time. In addition, the large majority of respondents considered that they had been treated fairly and that their views had been taken seriously (95% and 96%, respectively). These figures suggest a much higher level of commitment to participation on the part of youth justice agencies than that found in previous studies. Research by Hart and Thompson, for instance, conducted in 2009 suggested that there was an ambivalence among practitioners as to whether children who offend ‘deserve’ to have their voices heard and this was one of a number of obstacles to embedding a participatory approach into youth justice interventions.
As might be anticipated, there were discernible, and statistically significant, differences within the total sample in relation to these issues. In particular, ethnic minority respondents were less likely to report that they had been treated fairly, that they had been listened to or that they had received a good service. Less positive responses were also received from children subject to YROs or custodial sentences. Such children will tend to have a more extensive criminal record and/or have committed more serious offences and might thereby be thought to have had a different experience of the youth justice system, including a longer and more intensive contact with the YOT. Moreover, both of these groups – minority ethnic children and those subject to higher tariff disposals – were less likely to report that they now had a lower likelihood of reoffending.
More generally, the analysis confirmed that there was a strong correlation between children considering that they had been listened to and treated fairly and reporting that they had a lower risk of reoffending. Such findings tend to support the importance of what has been referred to a ‘procedural justice’ as a key indicator of effective youth justice intervention. As Table 3 indicates, there was also a significant relationship between children reporting that they had received a good service from the YOT and believing that there was a reduced likelihood of further involvement in criminality. Despite the differences highlighted above, these relationships remained significant when ethnicity and sentence type (as well as age, gender and reported disability) were controlled for.
Children reporting that they were less likely to offend by their views of YOT intervention.
YOT: youth offending team.
The authors of the report conclude that the survey presents:
a positive picture of the work undertaken by English and Welsh youth offending services – services which can make a big difference to those receiving them and to wider society.
As noted, however, responses from children from an ethnic minority background were slightly less encouraging: ‘while not large, the differences were significant and YOTs should continue to explore potential areas for improvement’.
In particular, the report recommends that YOTs should have regard to David Lammy’s proposal, in his review of the treatment of Black, Asian and ethnic minority individuals in the criminal justice system, that apparent disparities in treatment and outcomes should generate reform if an evidence-based explanation of the differences cannot be provided.
The voices of young people under supervision (findings from the HMI Probation eSurvey), by Oliver Kenton and Robin Moore, is published by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation and is available at: www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/11/eSurvey-Bulletin-Nov-18-final.pdf Young people’s participation in the youth justice system, by Di Hart and Chris Thompson, is published by the National Children’s Bureau, and is available at: www.ncb.org.uk/sites/default/files/field/attachment/participationinyouthjusticereport.pdf An independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System, by David Lammy, is published by the Ministry of Justice and is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/643001/lammy-review-final-report.pdf.
‘Spice’, a Form of New Psychoactive Substance, Is Regarded As a ‘Dirty Drug’ by Children in Custody in England and Wales
New or Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) are synthetically produced drugs that aim to replicate the effects of naturally occurring illegal substances. Possession and distribution of the former was, until recently, legal in England and Wales and, as a consequence, NPS were frequently referred to as ‘legal highs’. However, the Psychoactive Substance Act 2016 criminalised both activities aiming to address the growing market in this area.
One of the more popular NPS is ‘Spice’, which is marketed as emulating cannabis-based drugs but has been shown to be associated, in at least some cases, with more powerful effects and greater levels of harm. Research conducted in 2016 found that Spice was widely available in the adult prison system in England and Wales with one in three prisoners reporting having used it in the last 3 months, making it more popular than any other illegal substance. Prisoners themselves acknowledged that Spice had become a significant problem within the prison estate citing issues of ‘addiction, debt, violence, bullying and mental health problems … and self-harm’. More recently, research, commissioned by NHS (National Health Service) England, considers the extent to which Spice poses a similar risk for children in custody. The report of findings, by User Voice, was published in November 2018.
The study adopted a mixed-methods approach involving focus groups with 93 children across each of the three types of custodial institution that hold children: young offender institutions (YOIs), secure training centres (STCs) and secure children’s homes (SCHs); a survey of 201 children detained in one STC and two YOIs (equivalent to 22% of the total child custodial population); and a small number of interviews with staff and children across each establishment type.
The large majority of children who participated in the research indicated that they had experience of drugs, with cannabis being the most commonly used substance. Eighty-five per cent of children surveyed reported having used cannabis in the community, and 39 per cent had smoked cannabis since entering custody. In contrast to the earlier findings, noted above, in respect of adult prisoners, the use of Spice was rare, particularly within custody: just 8 per cent of children responding to the survey reported having used Spice in the community, but this figure fell to 1 per cent for use in the secure estate.
This low usage was in part related to limited availability; 72 per cent of children said that they had never seen Spice within the establishment. But availability was in turn a function of low demand. Indeed some of the children who reported that they had used Spice maintained that they had taken it under the impression that it was cannabis or tobacco. Those who had been aware of what they were using noted that it was not their drug of choice, but they had used it ‘as a cheap substitute for other drugs’. More importantly, most children viewed Spice as being ‘nitty’, meaning dirty, and dangerous. Indeed, 80 per cent of survey respondents indicated that they considered Spice to be a dangerous drug. As a consequence, there was a stigma attached to using the substance and potentially to those who used it. This sense of stigmatisation could have led to underreporting of usage, but it was also likely to reinforce the reluctance of children to experiment with the drug in the first place. In any event, it was clear that the impact of Spice in children’s custodial institutions differed considerably from that in adult prisons.
Notwithstanding the limited risk from Spice to children in custody, given the high level of admitted use of other illicit substances, the researchers also explored children’s perceptions of the support available to them. Although not directly comparable, the findings present a rather different picture to the largely positive one derived from the study by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation described in the previous news item. Seventy-five per cent of survey respondents said that they did not trust ‘any type of professional’. The report does not indicate whether the survey probed levels of trust with YOT staff in particular, but it was clear that children had little faith in a broad range of identified professionals. Just 10 per cent of respondents said that they trusted teachers, 11 per cent social workers, rising to 15 per cent for custodial staff, 16 per cent for substance misuse workers and 17 per cent for healthcare staff.
This absence of trust was largely explained by perceived breaches of confidentiality, broken promises and a failure of transparency on the part of professionals. Four in 10 survey respondents reported that they ‘had NEVER received any form of support that they feel has worked’. Despite this generally negative impression, a number of children were able to identify individual members of staff with whom they had established a trusting relationship and whom they felt had been helpful.
Spice: the bird killer. What prisoners think about the use of Spice and other legal highs in prison, by User Voice, is available at: http://www.uservoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/User-Voice-Spice-The-Bird-Killer-Report-Low-Res.pdf Nitty drugs and broken trust: young people talk Spice and the secure estate is published by User Voice and is available at: http://www.uservoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Young_spice_report_v12-screen-pages.pdf.
New Draft of the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment on Children’s Rights in Juvenile Justice Proposes that States Should Be Encouraged to Increase Their Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility to ‘At Least 14 Years of Age’
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (the Committee) has primary responsibility for monitoring States’ compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2007, the Committee issued General Comment No. 10, Children’s Rights in Juvenile Justice, to ‘provide the States parties with more elaborated guidance and recommendations for their efforts to establish an administration of juvenile justice in compliance’ with the Convention. In 2018, the Committee issued a draft revision of the General Comment (General Comment No. 24, Children’s Rights in Juvenile Justice) for consultation with a deadline for responses of 8 January 2019.
The revision is intended to ‘reflect developments that have occurred during the intervening decade’ which are said to include the following:
Advances in knowledge in respect of child development;
The persistent use of deprivation of liberty;
The recruitment of children by non-State armed groups, and terrorist or violent extremist organisations; and
‘Negative trends’ relating to the minimum age of criminal responsibility.
While the draft aims to preserve the ‘spirit and philosophy’ of the original Comment, a number of important changes are proposed.
The objectives of the revised Comment reiterate, in large part, those of the document it replaces, but provide an additional emphasis on the importance of establishing and implementing alternatives to criminal justice measures at all stages of the process, ensuring a fair trial for children who are not diverted, and the avoidance of the use of custody other than a last resort. In addition, there is an explicit intention to provide greater ‘clarity on the setting of a minimum age of criminal responsibility’. The document also contains a new section on terminology with perhaps the most important provision being a reference to normative use of the phrase ‘Children in conflict with the law’, defined as ‘children alleged as, accused of, or recognized as having infringed the penal law’. By implication, one might assume that this signals the Committee’s preference for child friendly language, and indeed the draft explicitly notes that ‘juvenile’ is no longer used to refer to children. Nonetheless, and perhaps surprisingly given the attention afforded to language, the Revised Comment repeatedly uses the term ‘child offender’ and the expression ‘juvenile delinquency’ continues to appear throughout the document.
The section on diversion adopts a slightly different tone to that it replaces, suggesting a greater scope for diversionary measures than envisaged in the earlier Comment. The revised text indicates that resolution outside of the criminal justice system is to be preferred in ‘the majority of cases’ rather than, as previously, applying to, ‘but not limited to, children who commit minor offences’. Where youth justice proceedings are initiated, the draft Comment has a number of provisions designed to reduce the use of deprivation of liberty. In particular, there is a new reference to the well-documented harms that are associated with the use of custody for children. The Committee also proposes that States should set a maximum custodial penalty that is considerably shorter than the equivalent prison sentence available for adults charged with similar offences. The amended text clarifies, too, that restrictions on the use of detention apply from the point of arrest.
As previously, the Comment notes the overuse of pretrial detention, but the revised document also highlights the fact that the use of such detention for punitive purposes violates the presumption of innocence. To ensure that detention is genuinely used for shortest period of time, in accordance with Convention requirements, the Committee recommends that States introduce: regular opportunities in their specialized juvenile justice system to permit early release from custody, including police custody, into the care of parents or other suitable adults.
In common with its predecessor, the revised draft envisages that release from custody subject to conditions should be available. Qualifications are now, however, made in relation to what form of conditions might be acceptable: while children might, for instance, reasonably be required to report to a police station or probation officer, the payment of ‘monetary bail’ should be avoided. The Committee also proposes the establishment of an age below which no child in conflict with the law can be deprived of their liberty either pre- or post-trial and recommends that this age should not be less than 16 years.
The provisions on the right to privacy are tightened in certain respects in the latest Comment. In particular, clarification is provided that the proscription on publication of information that could identify a child extends beyond the age of 18 years, although the text falls short of explicitly guaranteeing anonymity for life in respect of offences committed as a child. The provisions are moreover extended to include social media in recognition of the increased potential for privacy to be breached outside of reporting by traditional media. In the same vein, the indication that journalists who breach a child’s privacy should be subject to sanction, including criminal proceedings in appropriate cases, is widened to include any person who violates the child’s right to privacy.
Perhaps the most significant amendments are those pertaining to the minimum age of criminal responsibility. General Comment No. 10 indicates that States should establish an age of criminal responsibility that is not ‘too low’ in accordance with the Beijing Rules and notes that, in this context, an age below 12 years ‘is considered by the Committee not to be internationally acceptable’. The draft of General Comment No. 24 signals that such an age might still be regarded as too low. State parties are now: encouraged to increase their minimum age to at least 14 years of age. At the same time, the Committee commends States parties that have a higher minimum age, for instance 15 or 16 years of age. The Committee recommends that State parties should under no circumstances reduce the minimum age of criminal responsibility, if its current penal law sets the minimum age of criminal responsibility at an age higher than 14 years.
In this context, it may of interest that establishing 14 years as a minimum would be consistent with the average (mode) minimum age of criminal responsibility as reported in one of the most extensive cross-national reviews of youth justice, incorporating 90 jurisdictions, conducted in 2008.
The revised draft reiterates the provision in the earlier Comment that no child should be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release or parole. Such measures are in tension with Article 25 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child providing the right to periodic review for all children removed from home. The Comment also ‘strongly recommends’ that States should abolish all forms of life imprisonment committed when under the age of 18 years. However, the latter recommendation appears to carry less weight than the former outright proscription.
Where life imprisonment with the opportunity for release remains available, it is clear that offences committed as a child can lead to incarceration of sizeable numbers of children for considerable periods. A recent analysis of the situation in England and Wales, for instance, drawing on government data and published in January 2019, notes that between 2006 and 2016, a total of 197 children received a sentence of life imprisonment. The mean age at disposal was 16 years, but some children were sentenced as young as 13 years. Although the government is unable to provide exact figures for those currently in custody serving such sentences imposed for offending as a child, it is estimated that 400 individuals presently in detention are subject to sentences of longer than 14 years.
The draft Committee on the Rights of the Child General Comment No. 10 Children’s Rights in Juvenile Justice (2007) is published by the United Nations and is available at: https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/CRC.C.GC.10.pdf The draft Committee on the Rights of the Child General Comment No. 24 Children’s Rights in Juvenile Justice is published by the United Nations and is available at: https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRC/GC24/GeneralComment24.pdf The average minimum age of criminal responsibility across 90 countries is reported in Cross-national comparison of youth justice, by Neal Hazel, published by the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales and available at: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/7996/1/Cross_national_final.pdf Figures for the number of life sentences imposed on children are given in When prison means life: Child lifers and the pains of imprisonment, by David Scott, published in the Justice Gap January 2019 and available at: https://www.thejusticegap.com/prison-means-life-child-lifers-pains-imprisonment/.
The Number of Arrests of Children in the United States of America Falls to a Four-Decade Low
Arrest statistics collated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the United States, record the number of arrests reported in a given year rather than the number of persons arrested. Given the some individuals may be arrested on more than one occasion during the relevant period, the number of children involved may actually be lower than the figures suggest. With that caveat in mind, a report published by Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, in December 2018, indicates that there were 856,130 arrests of children below the age of 18 years in the United States during 2016. This figure is the lowest recorded since 1980. Juvenile arrests tended to rise until 1996, peaking at almost 2.7 million but began to decline thereafter with the rate of decrease accelerating rapidly in the period from 2007. As a consequence, the number of arrests of children was 68 per cent lower in 2016 than at its peak 20 years earlier. By comparison over the same two-decade period, the number of adult arrests has fallen by a more modest 20 per cent.
As noted above, much of the reduction in child arrests has occurred in the last 10 years. Table 4 indicates that there was a 58 per cent decline between 2007 and 2016. While trends vary according to the type of offence, most categories recorded a considerable fall. In the latest 12-month period for which data are available, the overall decline has continued. Arrests for some offences in that year did register an increase, most notably murder, where there was a 9 per cent rise and motor vehicle theft which showed an 8 per cent growth in child arrests. The latest figures, however, need to be considered in the context of longer term reductions for these categories of 36 and 47 per cent, respectively. Arrests for murders committed by adults also fell over that longer period, but only by 10 per cent.
Child arrests in 2016 by selected offence category and percentage change since 2007.
The decline manifested by burglary, vandalism and arson has been particularly pronounced over the past 10 years, albeit that the number of absolute arrests in relation to the latter offence is relatively small.
Boys account for the large majority of arrests: in 2016, less than one-third (29%) of all child arrests involved a female suspect. However, the extent of decline has been slower for girls than for boys for many offence types with the notable exception of theft. As shown in Table 5, this is particularly true for drug offences where the percentage point fall for girls was half that of boys.
Percentage changes in child arrest by sex between 2007 and 2016 for selected offence categories.
The patterns of arrests also vary significantly according to race. For most offence types, the decline in arrests has been higher for Black children than for their White peers; nonetheless, the former continue to be dramatically overrepresented in the data. Thus, while Black children account for 17 per cent of the general population aged 10 -17 years, more than half of all child arrests for violent crimes in 2016 involved a Black suspect.
Juvenile arrests, by Charles Puzzanchera, is published by Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and is available at: https://www.ojjdp.gov/pubs/251861.pdf.
Mentoring of Children in Foster Care in the United States Leads to ‘Less Criminal Offending in Early Adulthood among Male Participants’
The ‘My Life’ (ML) mentoring model aims to promote the development of personal self-efficacy among children in foster care. It involves a combination of individual and group mentoring. Participants are expected to meet weekly, for 60 to 90 minutes, with their mentors who are trained to help young people to apply skills across a range of domains, including:
Achievement – setting goals, making decisions, problem-solving;
Partnership development – negotiating; and
Self-regulation – positive thinking, focusing on accomplishments, stress reduction.
During the course of the programme, the mentor is expected to engage with the young person ‘in a balanced combination of didactic, experiential, and relationship-building activities’.
Children engaged in the programme are also expected to attend four group mentoring workshops that focus on transition-related issues, selected by the young people themselves but including employment, post-secondary education and exiting foster care. The workshops are led by young adults with previous experience of foster care.
Although the programme does not specifically target offending behaviour, a randomised control trial of 293 children, residing in foster care across three counties in Oregon in the United States, aimed to explore the impact of participation in ML on patterns of offending in young adulthood. Children were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups and there were no significant differences between the two cohorts in terms of age, gender, race, placement type, length of placement, placement moves or disability. The results of the research were published in April 2018 by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Rates of subsequent involvement in the adult criminal justice system were measured and, at 24 months following intervention, were higher, at 19.3 per cent for the control group than for those who had received intervention (19.3% per as against 10.7%). This difference narrowly missed levels of statistical significance. However, when the results were disaggregated by sex, significant differences in outcome did emerge: males who had participated in mentoring were significantly less likely than those who had not, to have been subsequently involved in the criminal justice system (6.6% against 29.3% for the control group). Given the higher propensity of males to be involved in youth offending, this outcome is considered to be an important one.
Moreover, a protective effect of mentoring was evident when outcomes were considered for children with no findings of delinquency at the start of the research programme. None of these children in the intervention group reported having been incarcerated by the 2-year follow-up point. By contrast, 8.5 per cent of those in the control group, who had not taken part in ML, had experienced incarceration within 2 years. This difference was statistically significant.
The authors conclude that ‘the My Life intervention can be a cost-effective preventive approach for helping young people specifically at risk of incarceration’.
Evaluation of the Effects of a Mentoring Program for Youth in Foster Care on Their Criminal Justice Involvement as Young Adults, published by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, provides an overview of the research and is available at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/grants/251626.pdf The full research report, Extending a randomized trial of the My Life mentoring model for youth in foster care to evaluate long-term effects on offending in young adulthood, by Jennifer E. Blakeslee and Thomas E. Keller, is available at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/grants/251418.pdf.