Youth Crime: De-Criminalising the Young Mind.

“The hard truth is that…. juvenile penal institutions have minimal impact on crime and if most prisons were closed tomorrow, the rise in crime would negligible……incapacitation as the tenet of crime control is a questionable social policy” (Miller, 1991:181-2).

Young people has always been a consistent source of adult concerns, anxiety and moralising. Two social characters emerged in the 19th century, the adolescence and the delinquent; the adolescence was represented as the phase between child and adulthood and young people were viewed as not fully responsible for their actions. At the same time the juvenile was denoted as having inadequate parental control, lack of education and was a product of faulty socialisation. It was thought the child was predisposed to crime because of the constraint of the environment and required intervention in the form of guidance and reformation (Goldson, 2013).

There was a growing body of experts such as lawyers, psychiatrist, criminologist and doctors who debated the causes of crime among young people and the influences of hereditary, environmental and domestic factors; There were several determinants of criminality that were considered to be important. However, there was a consensus that if the delinquent was caught early then they could be re-socialised and reformed. The delinquent socialisation was measured in three key area’s, the family, education and the labour market and how they are marginalised within these scope (Mathews, 2009).

This era was known as the birth of the social, where social policies emerged as a way to train and rehabilitate the poor. A new mode of adjudication was established in the form of the Juvenile court; in 1908 in England and Wales institution such as Barnardos and Boys Scout were developed to protect the physical and mental well being of the child.

The Juvenile court weakened the old adversarial system of finding innocence or guilt and replaced it with a system of regulation aimed at protecting and controlling the child. The competing rhetoric of care, control, welfare and punishment formed an inclusionary and exclusionary intervention, which impacted on the number of young people locked up, and the kind of regimes they experienced (Morris and Giller, 1986). 

The youth became identified as a metaphor for social change, this was identified as youth sub-cultures during the 1950s and 1960s, as the growing autonomy and affluence of some groups in society generated different attitudes and images of young people (Clarke et al, 1975). In England and Wales in the 1990s, the politicisation of crime and criminal justice, in particular youth crime and youth justice led to an increase in punitive responses to crime which mirrored the USA.

It is argued child imprisonment is not cost effective and a rational justification; the damage and harm it imposes on public fiscal and the failings of youth crime prevention and community safety has questioned its legitimacy and formulated a case for abolition (Rutherford, 1984; de Haan, 1990; Swaanigen ,1986).

Imprisonment has increased seven fold in the USA and this is related to the political discourse than actual increase in offending. The deep ideological relationship between the USA and UK led to the transfer of some of the ideological notions pertaining to crime. The USA policies on crime has been unsuccessful, costly in terms of social and economic value, however the Labour Government adopted these policies. The number of adults and child offenders formally subjected lockdown, electronic monitoring and surveillance monitoring have multiplied exponentially in the UK (Godson,2002; Nellis,2004). The fiscal cost of imprisonment is reported as six month stay in a young offender institution cost ￡50,000 per year (The Audit Commission, 2004) and this figure is substantially higher in privately owned and managed Secure Training Centres.

The creation of the prison nation in America has led to mass imprisonment (Garland,2001). The Politicisation of crime and the Americanisation of the criminal justice system and youth crime policies has generated a new punitiveness (Goldson,2002). The Conservative rhetoric was “prison works” “tough on crime and no more excuses” and Labour administration since 1997 had consolidated a peculiar punitivity towards crime which saw imprisonment in England and Wales increased significantly; In 1994 the average prison population was 48,631 but by 1997 it had risen to 60,131 (Prison Reform Trust,2004; by March 2004, the total prison population exceeded 75,000 (Howard League for Penal Reform,2004). The statistical trend for child prisoners followed similar trends, 4,000 per annum in 1992 to 7,600 in 2001, a 90 per cent increase (Nacro,2003 and 2005). During the same period child remand population grew by 142 per cent (Goldson, 2002).

The Youth Justice Board, (2004) argued there is a greater use of penal custody for children in England and Wales than most industrialised democratic countries in the world.

Decriminalisation of youth crime gained prominence in the 1960’s questioning the degree of criminal responsibility of young people and the scale of offending; for many youth offending was related to underlying personal and social problems. It was found child prisoners were routinely drawn from some of the most marginalised communities in England and Wales. The young offenders were entangled in a fabric of poverty, family disruption, drug and alcohol misuses, mental distress, emotional, sexual and physical abuses, homelessness, isolation, loneliness and subordinate employment and educational attainment (Social Service et al 2003; Children’s Right Alliance for England, 2002; Holmes and Gibbs,2004). 

The children in the young offender’s institutions (YOI) are deprived, abused and excluded and the penal custody is not equipped to their meet their needs (Association Directors of Social Service et al, 2003). The consequence of placing damaged children in damaging environments will result in further isolation, negative behavioural traits that will be reinforced, whilst Institutionalisation itself will cause a stigmatisation and labelling of the individual (Lemert, 1970).

On June 7, 2004, Parliamentary question time confirmed the amount of vulnerable children place in YOI has increased dramatically, this paradoxical fact and the moribund conditions of imprisonment was recognised by government ministers.

The poor performance of prison and the iatrogenic effect child imprisonment imposes compound the likelihood of re-conviction (Hagell and Hazel, 2001). The Social Exclusion Unit, (2002) confirmed prison is not working as a deterrent in turning the majority of offenders away from crime. In October 2004, a Parliamentary Select Committee reported reconviction rates stand at 80 per cent with regard to released child prisoners (House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, 2004).

The machinery of the law appears to be reserved for the working class youth, as troublesome young people from middle and upper class backgrounds were in practice excluded from penal institution and juvenile justice system. Furthermore, the accusation that juvenile system was selective based on class extended its remit to the discriminatory treatment of young Caribbean youth and disadvantage females in 1970’s and 1980’s. The development of alternatives to custody came in the form of borstal and detention centre and encapsulated both the need to decriminalise and deinstitutionalise juveniles (Bottoms, 1974).  The practices of diversion, decarceration and decriminalisation made a positive impact across the juvenile courts/ youth justice system in England and Wales during the 1980’s and early 1990’s.

The 1969 Children and Young Person Act was seen as a turning point in juvenile justice, the Act stipulated a new age of responsibility (14 years old) and proposed a new form of negotiation between the parents and social workers. The Act gave local authorities considerable powers in dealing with the problematic child (Pitts, 1996).

The movement towards deinstitutionalisation and decriminalisation correlated with rise in juvenile crimes (Bottoms, 1974).  The new realisation that the juveniles in penal custody was rising led to critics blaming the welfarism of the 1960’s in producing a system that was pervasive and more punitive. The intervention was counterproductive and became a process of net widening and the demarcation between, inclusion, exclusion, community-based, care and control was blurred ( Cohen, 1985).

The case of abolition of penal custody should not imply youth crime is not problem, a small minority of children do commit very serious crimes. Young people who transgress the law should be provided support, guidance and supervision. The intervention from state agencies has had a paradoxical effect and in some cases acts as net widening process. The backlash against welfarism saw an increase in juvenile custodial sentences with a more punitive political discourse based on the USA inspired politicisation of crime, youth crime in particular.  Although the general trend for juvenile incarceration had declined, the number still remains significant and the disadvantaged and damaged young child in need of care and containment are slowly being pulled in a system that perpetuate their social status.

Author : Keithia Grant

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