Youth Justice

Burgeoning youth incarceration and high reconviction rates in England and Wales have prompted a search for alternative responses. This has led to a renewed interest in other youth justice systems which appear to incarcerate fewer children and young people. Not surprisingly, Finland with the lowest rate of youth imprisonment and one of the lowest crime rates in Europe, has become a focus of attention. The research upon which this article is based set out to discover how, if Finnish youth incarceration rates are so low, the Finns respond to their most troubled and troublesome children and young people. The results of this investigation have proved paradoxical.

This research assessed effectiveness of prison-based cognitive skills programmes for young offenders in England and Wales, using reconviction as the outcome measure. Reconviction rates were compared between offenders who started a programme (N= 1,534) and a matched comparison group who did not (N= 1,534). Programme participation did not lead to a statistically significant reduction in reconviction, at one- or two-years following discharge. However, when offenders who dropped out of a programme and their matched comparisons were excluded from analysis, the one-year reconviction rate for programme completers was statistically significantly lower (p <0.05).

The launch of the ‘Respect Task Force’, on 2 September 2005, signals the New Labour government's ongoing electoral preoccupation with the behaviour of young people. Reflecting on how the ‘respect’ agenda fits into New Labour's overall youth justice project, in England and Wales, this paper argues that the government's willingness to define, legislate and sanction with regard to those responsibilities it deems essential to the membership rights of ‘law-abiding’ society is unlikely to engender positive outcomes. Rather it is contended that the continuing commitment to authoritarian penal populism within youth justice rhetoric and policy is likely to prove alienating, damaging and ultimately counterproductive.

This Commentary seeks to provide an update on a range of statutory initiatives to regulate and contain young persons that have recently been subject to tempering judicial interpretation.