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MCAMCAWhat Prospects Youth Justice?
Dr Joe Yates
Director
School of Humanities and Social Science
Youth Crime: A Complex Aetiology
• Disadvantaged young people make up the core business of youth justice.
• Children in trouble are located ‘at the nexus of multiple disadvantage and popular disapproval’ (Drakeford, 1988:22)
• They suffer complex and interlocking problems and vulnerabilities across a range of social policy domains.
• This is characterized by an aetiological complexity.• System contact can be counter productive• Neo Liberal policy has presented, and will continue to
present, new challenges
Crisis
• Responding to crisis, whether real or perceived, has been a catalyst for refashioning Youth Justice throughout history.
• The thematic emphasis changes due to context – economic, cultural and political drivers
• Crisis = opportunities as well threats
The State we are in
• Economic crisis as a driver for ‘shock therapy’
• Cuts to public spending – welfare retrenchment
• De-regulation
• Privatization
• But also - space to question costly (and counter productive institutional practices)
The ‘Big Society’
• ‘helping people to come together to improve their own lives . . . putting more power in people’s hands’ through a ‘massive transfer of power from Whitehall to local communities.’ (Cabinet Office, 2011).
• Cuts presented as enabling ‘shifting responsibility away from the state – to individuals, small groups, charities, philanthropists, local enterprise and big business’ (New Economics Foundation, 2010:2).
Not all bad?
• Exposure of costly institutional practices – the three D’s back in the frame?
• A shift away from the punitive vestiges of new labour?
• ‘Big society’ offering a new, more inclusive, framework for looking at the question of youth and crime?
• However, questions need to be asked about whether policy is being driven by principle or fiscal imperatives
A Note on Social Justice: the Amplification of Vulnerability
• A reduction in service provision• A retreat to core function• An erosion of the ‘social’• Parallel cuts - impacts of cuts on voluntary
sector budgets• Disruption of fragile networks of support• Undermining progressive practice?• Social harmful policies – are criminogenic
Delivering Justice: A Paradigm Shift . . . ?
• Rehabilitation services will no longer be delivered directly through statutory state agencies without ‘testing where the private, voluntary or community sectors can provide them more effectively and efficiently’ (Ministry of Justice, 2010:137).
Occupying the Vacuum: Payment by Results
• Passes risk from government to non state actors
• Outcome, not process, focussed
• Profit tied to outcome
• No outcome – no payment
The Rationale
1.Ensures providers focus on outcomes
2.A powerful incentive to perform on outcomes
3.Give providers space and freedom to innovate
Bringing in the skills of non state actors who can make ‘a real difference to those hardest to change’ (MoJ, 2010)
Some Philosophical questions
• Commitment to neo-liberal market hegemony ‘promotes the moral worthiness of profit-seeking in opposition to socialized systems of economic organization’ (Whyte, 2007:178).
• Will the ‘moral worthiness’ of profit override the ‘moral (rather than financial) obligation to promote the well being of children who face adversity’ (NAYJ, 2011:6).
A New Challenge: ‘Gaming’
• Evidence of ‘Gaming’ in other areas of PbR• ‘Creaming’ – the motivated• ‘Parking’ – the harder to work with• Calibration of payment to ‘risk’ to reduce incidence of
financial ‘gaming’• Segmenting the ‘market’ as a solution - ascribing
different premia to particular classes of offenders (Nicholson, 2011: 31)
• X efficiency vs pareto efficiency
Payment on Outcome
• Could work against a holistic approach to developmental needs
• Could further obfuscate the complexity of children’s needs
• Overstates validity of risk assessment• Could be used as a subterfuge to legitimate the moral
consequences of decisions about service provision.• Little attention to the dynamic nature of risk• ‘Reconviction’ as output is problematic
On Performance
• Limited evidence of improved performance• ‘little evidence that prime providers were developing in-
house provision to enhance the quality of customer services’ (Hudson, et al, 2010:3).
• Where there was innovation this ‘was largely focused on reducing operational costs and achieving performance efficiencies’
• Unwillingness to innovate – going with tried and tested models which are more easily priced.
• The logic of capital accumulation encourages market actors to self-maximize (Whyte, 2007:178)
Localism
• ‘Concerns that big business will drive out smaller non-profit organisations, which could otherwise provide contracted out services with more flexibility and local knowledge’ (New Economics Foundation, 2010:3)
• Key issues• Capacity to capitalise the projects?• Managing risk over a portfolio?• How can we ensure the most disadvantaged are not
further marginalised?• How will communities hold providers to account?
Shock and Awe: The Challenge Ahead
• Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs . . . the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable (Milton Friedman, 1982: ix cited in Klein, 2007:140)
• It is in these malleable moments . . . that these artists of the real plunge in their hands and begin their work of remaking the world (Klein, 2007:21)
The space we are in . . .
• The Chinese symbol for crisis is made up of two symbols ‘danger and ‘opportunity’
Plunging our hands in!
