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Youth Justice

DOI: 10.1177/1473225406065560 2006; 6; 91 Youth Justice

Barry Goldson and John Muncie Research Evidence

Rethinking Youth Justice: Comparative Analysis, International Human Rights and

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ISSN 1473-2254, Vol 6(2): 91–106DOI: 10.1177/1473225406065560

Rethinking Youth Justice: Comparative Analysis,International Human Rights and Research Evidence

Barry Goldson and John Muncie

Correspondence: Dr Barry Goldson, School of Sociology and Social Policy, TheUniversity of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street South, Liverpool L697ZA, UK. Email: b.goldson�liv.ac.uk

Abstract

Derived from a more ambitious international youth justice research project, this articleaims to critically interrogate the direction of contemporary youth justice policy in Englandand Wales and the political priorities that underpin it. By rethinking youth justice on thebasis of comparative analysis, international human rights and research evidence, wechallenge the current policy trajectory and offer an alternative formulation: a youth justicewith integrity.

Keywords: comparative analysis, evidence, human rights, integrity, justice, research

Introduction: Making Sense of Policy and Taking Account of Critique

Youth justice policy analysis is a challenging enterprise not least because the conceptualthematics and rationales that underpin statutes, policies and system configurations aresubject to constant movement and change and, throughout history, such dynamism hasbeen heavily influenced, if not determined, by prevailing political exigencies and specificsectoral interests (Hendrick, 2006). As a consequence, ‘youth justice’ is temporally andspatially differentiated, diverse and disparate and it is difficult, if at all possible, toconceptualize it by appealing to any totalizing policy rationale. In this way:

. . . youth justice is a history of conflict, contradictions, ambiguity and compromise . . . [it] tendsto act on an amalgam of rationales, oscillating around and beyond the caring ethos of socialservices and the neo-liberal legalistic ethos of responsibility and punishment.

(Muncie and Hughes, 2002: 1)

In short, youth justice policy discourses and the systems that emanate from them,comprise fluid sites of contestation and uneasy settlements of competing and/orintersecting thematics including: welfare; justice; informalism; rights; responsibilities;restoration; prevention; remoralization and retribution/punishment (Goldson, 2004).

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The means by which particular ‘themes’ are privileged within specific jurisdictions atgiven moments in time, and the processes whereby intrinsic tensions are mediated, areinvariably subject to the vagaries of political imperative.

Within this context – as many commentators have observed – the pace of youthjustice reform in England and Wales since the election of the first New Labouradministration in 1997 has been unprecedented. As early as 1993, when the NewLabour motif of ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ was first formulated,youth justice policy formation has been overtly politicized. Three successive NewLabour governments have applied a ‘blizzard of initiatives, crackdowns and targets’(Neather, 2004: 11); a ‘toughening up [of] every aspect of the criminal justice system’(Blair, 2004: 6) introduced via innumerable policy statements (Jones, 2002) andultimately implemented through statute. Far-reaching and deep-cutting reforms havebeen underpinned by a substantial corpus of new legislation including: the Crime andDisorder Act 1998; the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999; the Criminal Justice andCourt Services Act 2000; the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000; the CriminalJustice and Police Act 2001; the Police Reform Act 2002; the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003;the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Beyondan apparent political obsession with being ‘tough on crime’ and adhering to a ‘no moreexcuses’ agenda (Home Office, 1997), it is difficult to identify any consistent rationaleand/or philosophical core to the reforming zeal. A ‘new’ rhetoric of youth crimeprevention, restoration and social inclusion is uncomfortably located alongside thetargeting of ‘non-offenders’ as well as ‘offenders’ within formal systems of justice(criminalization), an increasing tendency to responsibilize children, their families andcommunities, and a reliance on an expanding control apparatus to ‘manage’ poverty,structural disadvantage and systemic inequality. In the final analysis, however, thedefining hallmark of contemporary youth justice in England and Wales is a ‘newpunitiveness’ (Goldson, 2002; Pratt et al., 2005), characterized by rates of childimprisonment significantly exceeding those found in most other industrializeddemocratic countries in the world (Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, 2004).

The interventionist, criminalizing, retributive and ultimately incarcerative dimensionsof the new youth justice in England and Wales have attracted widespread critique ona range of grounds from: academic researchers (see for example: Fionda, 2005;Goldson, 2000b; Muncie, 2004; Pitts, 2001; Smith, 2003; Squires and Stephen, 2005);major statutory commissions and inspectorates (see for example: Audit Commission,2004; Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, 2005; Social Services Inspectorate etal., 2002); parliamentary committees (see for example: House of Commons Committeeof Public Accounts, 2004; House of Lords House of Commons Joint Committee onHuman Rights, 2003); crime reduction and penal reform organizations (see for example:Nacro, 2003 and 2005; the Howard League, 2005) and children’s rights and childwelfare agencies (see for example: Children’s Rights Alliance for England, 2002;Monaghan et al., 2003). Furthermore, key aspects of youth justice policy have beensuccessfully challenged in the courts, including an action in 2005 brought by a15-year-old boy from Richmond, London, regarding the legality of imposing curfewson children under the age of 16 – a power granted to the police by provisions of theAnti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 (Carson, 2005). An earlier action for judicial review,

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brought by the Howard League for Penal Reform in November 2002, overturnedaspects of the government’s policy of limiting statutory child protection duties towardschildren held in young offender institutions (prisons). In reflecting upon the conditionsand treatment of child prisoners, Mr Justice Munby, a High Court Judge, observed that:

the State appears to be failing, and in some instances failing very badly, in its duties to vulnerableand damaged children . . . [these are] matters which, on the face of it, ought to shock theconscience of every citizen.

(Munby, 2002: para. 175)

Perhaps most significant of all, however, is the searing critique of core dimensions ofyouth justice policy and practice in England and Wales, levelled at the government bythe United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (2002) and the Council ofEurope’s Commissioner for Human Rights (Office for the Commissioner for HumanRights, 2005). In particular they have expressed grave concerns over the low age ofcriminal responsibility and the tendency to incarcerate children at younger ages and forlonger periods than most other West European jurisdictions.

The extent to which analyses of youth justice policy in England and Wales revealcomplex tensions and contradictions, together with the breadth and depth ofauthoritative critique, provide compelling reasons to rethink the current policy trajectory.In this sense this article derives from a more ambitious project within which comparativeanalysis, international human rights (standards, treaties, conventions and rules) andevidence drawn from research (and practice) comprise the co-ordinates within whichsuch rethinking might be located (Goldson and Muncie, 2006; Muncie and Goldson,2006a). This is detailed and complex analytical territory and, for the purposes here, weaim to do little more than sketch the contours and priorities of the wider project.

Rethinking Youth Justice (1): Comparative Analysis

At the most rudimentary level, it is possible to discern two quite different assumptionsthat commonly prevail (in the UK at least) with regard to conceptualizing key trendsin international youth justice. The first assumption is intrinsically pessimistic. Itconceives a hegemonic ‘culture of control’ (Garland, 2001), within which the ‘specialstatus’ of ‘childhood’ is diminishing; welfare protectionism is retreating; children areincreasingly ‘responsibilized’ through processes of ‘adulteration’ and the penalpopulation of young people continues to expand worldwide. This ‘way of seeing’situates England and Wales (just behind the USA) at the vanguard of a burgeoning waveof authoritarianism and punitivity that is thought to be sweeping across the ‘advanced’capitalist world. The second assumption idealizes international (read some WestEuropean and Australasian) jurisdictions. It infers a sense of continual movementtowards penal tolerance, child centredness and progressive human rights compliance.Within this frame of reference, England and Wales (and the USA) is regarded as beingconspicuously out-of-step with the liberal progressiveness that is said to typify otheryouth justice systems. Such binary classification is, of course, essentially a caricature and,in its oversimplification, it neglects the complexities and nuances of comparative youthjustice systems. Furthermore, even when comparative analyses transcend crude ‘penal

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severity-lenience’ dichotomies, their methodologies and scope invariably remainconstrained.

International statistical comparisons of the operation of juvenile/youth justicesystems are now routinely gathered by various agencies including the United Nations,the Council of Europe and the International Centre for Prison Studies based at KingsCollege, London. This may appear unproblematic but such data are not always easy torecover or to interpret and none can claim to be beyond dispute. Even when data exist,the collection of penal statistics is continually dogged by the problem of strictcomparability before any academic interpretation of exactly what ‘difference’ signifiescan take place. On the one hand, the codification and recording of ‘crime’ varies. Onthe other hand, discrete jurisdictions have developed different judicial systems fordefining and processing ‘young offenders’. For example, what is classified as ‘penalcustody’ in one country may not be in others, even though the regimes and the practicesof secure detention may be similar (Pitts and Kuula, 2006). Furthermore, not alljurisdictions collect the same data on the same age groups and populations and few, ifany, appear to do so within the same time periods. Linguistic differences in how theterms ‘minor’, ‘juvenile’, ‘child’ and ‘young offender’ are defined and operationalized,further hinder any attempt to ensure a sound comparative base.

Similarly, despite their interest and benefits, attempts that have been made to unravelnational differences rarely go much beyond describing the historical emergence and thepowers and procedures of particular national jurisdictions (see for example, Bala et al.,2002; Tonry and Doob, 2004; Winterdyk, 2002). This pays scant regard to the actualtranslation and transmission of statute via the varying (discretionary) practices of youthjustice. Indeed, it can even be argued that the national is an inadequate unit ofcomparative analysis in that it conceals, or at least obfuscates, local and/or regionaldifferences within jurisdictions. For sure, neo-liberal economics, conservative politicsand policy transfer may well serve to create some standardized and homogenizedinternational/global responses to youth offending, but youth justice is also significantlylocalized through national, regional and local enclaves of difference (Hughes andFollett, 2006; Muncie, 2005). In many countries it is difficult to prioritize nationaldevelopments above widely divergent regional differences, most evident in sentencingdisparities. In short, once it is recognized that variations within nation state borders maybe as great, or even greater, than some differences between them, then taking the national(let alone the international and the global) as the basic unit for understanding policyshifts and processes of implementation becomes questionable (Crawford, 2002;Edwards and Hughes, 2005; Stenson and Edwards, 2004).

In summary, comparative analysis is beset by three key limitations. First, it is oftenconceptualized in an oversimplified binary form comprising a ‘penal severity-lenience’dichotomy. Second, different forms of data collection and varying conceptualdefinitions between youth justice jurisdictions confound tidy comparison. Third,inter-jurisdictional comparisons tend to overlook intra-jurisdictional variations. What isultimately required, therefore, are detailed analyses of the politics of policy formationin different jurisdictions and rigorous assessments of the means by which globalconvergent trends become translated, inflected or hybridized in particular national,regional and local settings. It is not enough to document national similarities and

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differences in international youth justice; rather it is necessary to critically unpack theircontradictions and inconsistencies and to delve below political rhetoric in order todiscover how youth justice plays itself out in practice. The value of robust comparativeanalysis is that it encourages debate of the structural, cultural and political contexts anddynamics within which youth justice policies and systems are constructed. In this way,examining contemporary youth justice systems through a comparative lens informsrethinking by providing a number of both general and specific insights.

In general terms, the more progressive and constructive youth justice systems appearto be found in localities, jurisdictions and/or countries where there is a politicalwillingness to sustain welfare protectionism or to subsume youth justice withinalternative forms of conflict resolution. In particular, a cultural and political sensibilitythat imprisoning children and young people is not only harmful but also self-defeatingis crucial. Some of the key drivers of the more diversionary, decriminalizing anddecarcerative youth justice systems are derived from restatements of a ‘children first’philosophy; a commitment to pardon and to protect, but above all a preparedness todepoliticize youth crime and justice. In policy terms this involves the objective ofremoving all children from prison service custody and a greater commitment tosuspending sentences and employing inclusionary and participative community-basedinterventions as direct alternatives to incarceration. Compliance both with the spirit andthe content of the international human rights framework is pivotal.

In more specific terms, whereas UK jurisdictions hold children to be criminallyresponsible at conspicuously young ages (8 in Scotland, 10 in England and Wales andNorthern Ireland), other countries delay the formal criminalization of the young andthere is significant variation in the age of criminal minority: 12 in Canada, theNetherlands and Turkey; 13 in France; 14 in Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand andSpain; 15 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden; and 18 in Belgium andLuxembourg, by way of illustration. Whilst the age of criminal responsibility cannot beregarded as the exclusive determining characteristic of progressive or repressive youthjustice systems, it is certainly significant. In Belgium, for example, there are – with fewexceptions – no punishments available to young people under the age of 18. Anyjudicial intervention for children and young people is conceptualized as educative andprotective, as distinct from punitive and responsibilizing. In principle it is the needs ofthe child or young person that determines the nature of the intervention (Put andWalgrave, 2006). Similarly, in Finland, children’s needs are conceptualized and met withreference to structural or systems-based analyses and juvenile/youth justice policy isinformed by an awareness of socio-economic conditions rather than a reliance onresponsibilization and individual pathology. As a result there remains, even in the wakeof the recent politicization of youth crime, a remarkable political consensus thatinvesting in health and social services is more likely to deliver positive outcomes thandeveloping penal institutions (Lappi-Seppala, 2006).

In the same way that some youth justice jurisdictions manage to resist (or delay)processes of child criminalization, retain a progressive welfare ethic and locate youthcrime and justice within forms of social-structural analysis and response, others sustaindecarcerative priorities. Most jurisdictions in Australia, for example, have witnessedsubstantial falls in child imprisonment since the 1980s, seemingly as a result of

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extending diversionary options including the use of youth conferencing (Cunneen andWhite, 2006). Recent evidence from Canada also suggests a growing decarcerativemovement (Smandych, 2006). A number of European countries, such as Italy (Nelken,2006) and Finland (Lappi-Seppala, 2006), have been able to report significant decreasesin their daily count of youth (under 21) incarceration between 1992 and 2002.According to UN data, Japan, Norway and Sweden similarly stand out as having beenable to keep youth imprisonment to an absolute minimum and as maintaining suchtoleration throughout the 1990s. Whether politically, pragmatically or economicallyinspired, a case establishing the damaging effects of custody on children (and the widercommunity) has repeatedly been made and acknowledged. Finland’s experience, forexample, seems to show that high incarceration rates and tough penal regimes do notcontrol crime (Lappi-Seppala, 2006). They are unnecessary. Decarceration can bepursued without sacrificing public safety. Indeed a progressive consensus appears toexist in Nordic countries (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark) that ‘forwardlooking’ social and educational measures, together with mediation, take precedence overprosecution and punishment.

As stated, it would be misleading to idealize international youth justice systemsand/or to assume that they are free of the complexities, tensions and contradictionsthat we highlighted by way of introduction. That said, there are clearly lessons to bedrawn from comparative analysis that could inform the construction of a moreprogressive, coherent, rights compliant and ultimately more effective youth justicesystem than that which currently prevails in England and Wales.

Rethinking Youth Justice (2): International Human Rights

Specified rights in respect of children and young people within youth justice systemsare provided by a range of international conventions, standards, treaties and ruleswhich, taken together, comprise a strong foundation for rethinking youth justice. TheUnited Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the BeijingRules) were adopted by the United Nations in 1985 and provide guidance for theprotection of children’s rights in the development of separate and specialist juvenile/youthjustice systems. They were a direct response to a call made by the Sixth United NationsCongress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders which convenedin 1980. The Rules operate within a framework of two other sets of internationaljuvenile/youth justice standards, both of which were adopted in 1990: the UnitedNations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (the Riyadh Guidelines), and theUnited Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty (the JDL Rules).Also in 1990, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) set outcomprehensive minimum standards for the treatment of all children. The UNCRC hassubsequently been ratified by 192 countries, making it the most widely adopted of allinternational conventions (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner forHuman Rights, 2006). Although it does not relate exclusively to youth justice, many ofits provisions (‘Articles’) are directly focused upon children in conflict with the law.

It is not practical here to engage with the comprehensive detail of internationalconventions, standards, treaties and rules but some of their provisions are particularly

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noteworthy. Article 2 of the UNCRC provides for non-discrimination, consistent withthe Beijing Rules that state, at Rule 2.1, that: ‘the following Standard Minimum Rulesshall be applied to juvenile offenders impartially, without distinction of any kind, forexample as to race, colour, sex, language, religion’. Furthermore, Article 3 of theUNCRC provides that the best interests of the child should be a primary considerationin all actions, courts and law and this too echoes other international human rightsinstruments. Although such instruments fall short of establishing a minimum age ofcriminal responsibility – or to give any explicit guidance as to what might constitute aninternationally acceptable age limit below which prosecution should be impossible –Article 4.1 of the Beijing Rules states that the age of criminal minority should ‘not befixed at too low an age level, bearing in mind the facts of emotional, mental andintellectual maturity’.

Notwithstanding its value, the extent to which the international human rightsframework might impose a ‘compulsory’ rethinking of youth justice upon any nationalgovernment is limited. The Beijing Rules, the Riyadh Guidelines and the JDL Rules donot carry the same legal authority as the UNCRC. Moreover, there are no ready meansunder which the provisions of the UNCRC can be enforced in law. In England andWales, for example, a child or young person has no right to go to court to challenge adenial of their rights under the UNCRC directly. Equally, not all ‘rights’ carry the sameweight; some are thought to be ‘absolute’ whilst others are ‘limited’. Finally, ‘stateparties’ (governments) can restrict the extent to which they ‘ratify’ the Convention byentering specific ‘reservations’.

Despite their limitations, the international instruments provide a clear steer to youthjustice in at least two crucially important respects. First, with regard to generic principlesof intervention. Rule 5.1 of the ‘Beijing Rules’ states that: ‘the juvenile justice system. . . shall ensure that any reaction to juvenile offenders shall always be in proportion tothe circumstances of both the offenders and the offence’. Similarly, Rules 17.1(b) and17.1(d) provide that: ‘restrictions on the personal liberty of the juvenile shall . . . belimited to the possible minimum’, and ‘the well-being of the juvenile shall be the guidingfactor in her or his case’ (this is reiterated at Article 40.4 of the UNCRC). Indeed, theinternational instruments enshrine the concept of proportionality to offset thelikelihood of over-zealous intervention and concomitant forms of injustice. In essencethis important principle requires no more and no less than a fair and proportionalreaction in any case where a child or young person is convicted of a criminal offence.Second, in respect of custodial detention, Rule 19.1 of the ‘Beijing Rules’ provides that:‘the placement of a juvenile in an institution shall always be a disposition of last resortand for the minimum necessary period’, and Article 37 of the UNCRC states:‘imprisonment of a child shall be . . . used only as a measure of last resort and for theshortest appropriate period of time . . . every child deprived of liberty shall be treatedwith humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person’. Each of thesecore issues is particularly pertinent to any rethinking of youth justice in England andWales where, as explained already, early (and often quite intensive) intervention andhigh levels of custodial detention define the polar ends of a new correctionalcontinuum.

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Rethinking Youth Justice (3): Research Evidence

Despite ‘official’ crime surveys appearing to indicate that patterns of youth crime areessentially stable in England and Wales (and other industrialized countries) and certaindata even suggesting that the incidence of youth crime is actually decreasing (Bateman,2006), the youth justice system, as noted, has substantially expanded over the lastdecade. The ‘front end’ or ‘shallow end’ of the system is characterized by multiplyingand increasingly interventionist powers and processes (Hughes and Follett, 2006; Smith,R., 2006), whilst the ‘back end’ or ‘deep end’ has been marked by the significant growthand diversification of intensive forms of surveillance (McNeill, 2006) and custodialresponses (Goldson, 2006). The rationales for system expansion disproportionate tothe actual incidence of youth crime, and for modes of ‘preventive’ intervention that arejust as likely to impose iatrogenic effects, are key sites of ambiguity, controversy anddebate.

Such contestation is especially significant given that politicians and their principalpolicy advisors consistently claim legitimacy for the ‘new’ approaches by appealing to‘evidence’; ‘evidenced-based policy’ has become a mantra of ‘modernized’ governmentand a legitimizing principle for ‘new’ modes of governance (Smith, D., 2006). Indeed,youth crime discourses are increasingly underpinned by the rhetoric of rationality:‘evidenced-based’ responses; ‘what works’ priorities; ‘best value’ imperatives and theneed to ensure that ‘programmes’ are routinely ‘evaluated’ and ‘outputs’ are assiduouslymonitored. At face value, it is difficult to quarrel with any tendency that claims to applyevidence – drawn from research and evaluation findings and/or reflexive praxis – tothe processes of youth justice policy formation. At its simplest, it implies a mechanisticformulation whereby youth justice policy is no longer ‘hampered’ by any adherence tocompeting philosophical principles and policy-makers are liberated from having towrestle with thematic complexities; they simply need to translate ‘hard evidence’ intopolicy by means of technical scientific transfer.

However the notion of evidenced-based policy formation within the contemporaryyouth justice sphere is problematic on at least three counts. First and second are thethorny issues of methodological rigour and selectivity of application. Much that passes for‘evaluation’ for example, together with the means by which ‘evidence’ is interpreted andapplied, is open to serious question (Bottoms, 2005; Wilcox, 2003). Selective ‘evidence’is privileged whilst a wider body of criminological ‘evidence’ – both theoretically andempirically derived, particularly in relation to structurally mediated processes ofcriminalization (see for example: Gelsthorpe and Sharpe, 2006; Webster, 2006; Whiteand Cunneen, 2006) – is peripheralized.

Third is the question of epistemological oversimplification. The social world and theprocesses of youth justice policy formation are far more complex than oversimplified‘evidence-based’ and ‘what works’ discourses often imply. In the final analysis, thepositivist assumption that quasi-scientific laws and rational prediction are not onlypossible and desirable, but also essential, for modernizing youth governance is flawed(Newman, 2001; Smith, D., 2002 and 2006). Furthermore, ‘programme evaluation’ isnever a pure science. Most commissioners of evaluation research might want the ‘facts’but facts do not speak for themselves. Indeed, to argue otherwise is more akin to public

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sector managerialism than it is to serious criminological research. Within themanagerialist project rationalized inputs and outputs are conceptualized in scientific andtechnical terms and evaluations are ‘dominated by notions of productivity, task remitsand quantifiable outcomes . . . [whereby] evaluation comes to rest solely on indicatorsof internal system performance’ (Muncie, 1999a: 287–9). The unpredictability, variabilityand intrinsic complexity of the social and the political, however, militates against suchcrude generality and supposed uniformity.

There are indeed multiple problems and controversies associated with‘evidenced-based’ policy and ‘what works’ rationales as they are currently formulatedwithin contemporary youth justice, although it is not our intention to engage with thedetail here. Fundamentally, there is a conspicuous discordance between key messagesfrom research and practice experience (the ‘evidence’) on the one hand, and coreaspects of modern youth justice policy on the other (Goldson, 2001). It follows thatanalyses of what the ‘evidence’ actually tells us and how it might be understood(historically, theoretically and/or empirically); a consideration of the extent to which‘evidence’ is informing contemporary youth justice policy and a reflexive interpretationof how any discordance between ‘evidence’ and policy formation might be conceived,are essential components of the rethinking project.

Youth Justice with Integrity

We have argued here and elsewhere that contemporary youth justice reforms inEngland and Wales essentially derive from, and are legitimized by, a new politics of‘toughness’ on the one hand, and a range of pragmatic orientations and ‘what works’discourses on the other. Youth justice policies are increasingly located within a widerideological context whereby social, economic and political problems are redefined asissues to be managed rather than resolved. The combined effect of this has been to: tightenprocedures; impose homogeneous ‘standards’ and ‘targets’; emphasize the‘management’ and ‘correction’ of ‘young offenders’; intensify criminalizing modes ofintervention; downplay social welfare traditions and profile the overtly controllingfunctions of the youth justice apparatus. This characterizes a broader and deepermovement in criminal justice in England and Wales, away from rehabilitative andtransformative optimism towards greater surveillance, regulation and, ultimately,punishment. The processes of rethinking – informed by comparative analysis,international human rights and a critical reading of ‘evidence’ – challenge suchrepressive directions. Whilst it is crucial to remain mindful of the intrinsic limitationsthat we have signalled, the rethinking project begins to define a youth justice withintegrity founded upon six core principles.

First, is the principle that policy should comprehensively address the social and economicconditions that are known to give rise to conflict, harm, social distress, crime andcriminalization, particularly poverty and inequality. It is no coincidence that youth justicesystems characteristically serve to process (and punish) the children of the poor. Thisis not to suggest that all poor children commit crime, or that only poor children offend,but the corollaries between child poverty, social and economic inequality, youth crime,criminalization and state intervention are undeniable. It follows that the children who

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are most heavily exposed to correctional intervention, surveillance and punishmentwithin the youth justice system in England and Wales, are routinely drawn from someof the most disadvantaged families, neighbourhoods and communities. NotwithstandingNew Labour’s proclaimed ‘historic aim’ to end child poverty, children without a parentin paid employment continue to face a 74 per cent risk of poverty (Preston, 2005); theproportion of children in such households in the UK is the highest in Europe (Palmeret al., 2005) and 28 per cent of British children (3.5 million) continue to endure thehardships imposed by poverty (Flaherty et al., 2004). The corrosive impact of povertyand structural inequality is key to understanding the problems both experienced andperpetuated by identifiable sections of the young (White and Cunneen, 2006; Webster,2006; Hughes and Follett, 2006; Hancock, 2006; Mizen, 2006).

Second, and closely related to the first point, are the principles of universality,comprehensiveness and re-engaging the ‘social’. This requires closing the contradictory andantagonistic fractures that have opened between ‘every child matters’ priorities and the‘no more excuses’ imperatives characteristic of the ‘new correctionalism’ (Muncie andGoldson, 2006b). In essence it necessitates the conceptual and institutionaldecriminalization of social need. ‘Normal’ social institutions – including families(however they are configured), ‘communities’, youth services, leisure and recreationalservices, health provision, schools, training and employment initiatives – need to beadequately resourced and supported. The industrial-scale expansion of the youth justiceapparatus should be curtailed and resources re-directed to generic ‘children first’services. If for no other reason, this is necessary because as Bateman and Pitts (2005:257) have observed: ‘those factors which appear to be most closely associated withpersistent and serious youth crime . . . are those which are least amenable tointervention by agents of the youth justice system’. Conversely, normalizing anddecriminalizing approaches – intrinsic to the principles of universality,comprehensiveness and re-engaging the ‘social’ – are substantiated by robust researchevidence. One of the most ambitious and comprehensive research analyses of youthcrime prevention programmes in the world, for example, demonstrated that, even for‘serious, violent and chronic juvenile offenders’, some of the most effective responsesemanate from initiatives that are located outside of the formal criminal justice system(decriminalization), build upon children’s and young people’s strengths as distinct fromemphasizing their ‘deficits’ (normalization) and adopt a social-structural approach ratherthan drawing on individualized, criminogenic and/or medico-psychological perspectives(contextualization) (Howell et al., 1995).

Third, is the principle of diversion. In many respects, this is the antithesis of theinterventionist and net-widening tendencies that characterise contemporary youthjustice policy in England and Wales. Diversion is not only consistent with the humanrights framework and the more progressive practice found in some international youthjustice systems, but it has also been shown to be an effective strategy in terms of youthcrime prevention (Bell et al., 1999; Goldson, 2000b; Kemp et al., 2002; Pragnell, 2005).Of course, the most effective diversionary strategy is literally to remove children andyoung people from the youth justice nexus altogether, by significantly raising the ageof criminal responsibility. There are strong grounds to support this proposition, notleast evidence from jurisdictions where the age of criminal responsibility is substantially

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higher than it is in England and Wales and where ‘it can be shown that there are nonegative consequences to be seen in terms of crime rates’ (Dunkel, 1996: 38).

Fourth, is the principle of child-appropriate justice. In the minority of cases where formalyouth justice intervention is deemed unavoidable, it should be provided within achild-appropriate context. The intensity and duration of intervention should beproportionate to the severity of the offence and limited to the minimum that isabsolutely necessary and its rationale should be explicit, evidenced-based, rightscompliant and likely to provide positive outcomes for the ‘young offender’ and, whererelevant, to any injured party (Haines and O’Mahony, 2006).

Fifth, is the principle of abolitionism. Interventions that are ineffective or, moreproblematically, that violate international human rights obligations, are known to bedamaging and harmful and/or aggravate the very issues that they seek to resolve, areprofoundly irrational and should be abolished. This applies, in varying degrees to:specious expressions of actuarialism and over-zealous modes of early intervention(Goldson, 2000a; Smith, R., 2006); the net-widening effect of ‘anti-social behaviour’initiatives (Hughes and Follett, 2006); and most spectacularly of all, the practices ofchild imprisonment (Goldson, 2005). This is not to imply that nothing should be donewith regard to youth crime, or that troubled and troublesome children and youngpeople should simply be left to fend for themselves without the care, guidance, supportand supervision that they may well need. The central argument, however, is that theyouth justice system is singularly unfit for purpose. The abolitionist principle extendsbeyond destructuring the depth and reach of the youth justice system itself; it alsorequires a critical rethinking of the conceptual origins, significances and meaningsattributed to terms such as ‘youth disorder’, ‘anti-social behaviour’, ‘youth crime’ and‘young offender’. It offers an invitation to ‘start from a different place’; to focus upon‘the social origins of harms . . . [and engage with] a view of the world that sees humanagency as defined by structures’ (Hillyard et al., 2005: 61). This connects back to thecentral importance of critical contextualization, the structural relations of class, ‘race’and gender and the material realities of poverty and inequality.

Sixth, are the related principles of depoliticization and tolerance. The politicization ofyouth crime and justice, particularly in England and Wales, has served to demonizeidentifiable constituencies of the young (Scraton, 1997), to legitimize ‘ill-considered butattention grabbing tough-on-crime proposals’ (Tonry, 2004: 2) and to ‘institutionaliseintolerance’ (Muncie, 1999b). Senior politicians repeatedly refer to an increasinglyanxious, risk-averse and fearful public. Selective constructions of ‘public opinion’ aremobilized and presented as primary legitimizing rationales for the ‘tough on crime’agenda. Such reactive politicization not only negates evidence and distorts policyformation, but is also underpinned by a skewed reading of public opinion itself.Findings from the first survey to systematically explore public opinion and publicattitudes to youth crime and justice in England and Wales revealed complex,multilayered and even contradictory conceptualizations. Whilst the survey found thatthe public tend to have a more pessimistic view of youth crime than is justified by theofficial crime statistics – hardly surprising given the sensationalist and amplificatorynature of media representations – people are also significantly less recriminatory andpunitive than is often supposed (Hough and Roberts, 2004: ix). Furthermore:

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When the nature of public attitudes is explored in depth using sophisticated research methods,quite different results emerge compared to the often-cited rudimentary surveys . . . [T]here is littleevidence to support the view that harsh penal and criminal policies are favoured as a means ofaddressing offending behaviour.

(Hancock, 2004: 63)

A youth justice with integrity, therefore, must transgress crude moralization, mediasensationalism and the politics of intolerance and engage, instead, with moresophisticated, measured, dignified and rationally defensible approaches. Seniorpoliticians have a responsibility to inform public opinion as distinct from simply reactingto over-simplified and fundamentally erroneous interpretations of it. Ultimately thisdemands the depoliticization of youth crime and justice and the development of moreprogressively tolerant, human rights compliant, non-criminalizing, inclusionary andparticipative strategies.

Conclusion

The history of youth justice to date has been a history of tension and contradiction;the co-existence of competing policy rationales and (often antagonistic) politicalcalculations. In recent years, in England and Wales at least, the politicization of youthcrime and justice has profoundly distorted policy formation. This article, derived froma wider and more ambitious project of rethinking, has attempted to map the contoursof a youth justice with integrity; free of crude political posturing and informed bycomparative analysis, international human rights and research evidence. The project isfar from complete, but even in its early developmental form it poses a fundamentalchallenge to politicians and youth justice policy-makers in England and Wales.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank each and all of our colleagues from the national and international academicyouth justice communities who contributed to the two companion volumes (Goldson andMuncie, 2006; Muncie and Goldson, 2006a) from which this article is derived.

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Barry Goldson is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Sociology and SocialPolicy, The University of Liverpool where he is also Director of Research.John Muncie is Professor of Criminology at the Faculty of Social Science, The OpenUniversity and Co-Director of the International Centre for Comparative CriminologicalResearch.

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