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Critical Issues in Contemporary Penal Policy Youth Justice: Taking the Long View

Critical Issues in Contemporary Penal Policy Youth Justice: Taking the Long View. Oct 22 nd 2014 Roger Smith. Taking the Long View. Overview Recurrent challenges in youth justice The evidence of experience Some uncomfortable truths Is anything new under the sun? Thinking differently.

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Critical Issues in Contemporary Penal Policy Youth Justice: Taking the Long View

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  1. Critical Issues in Contemporary Penal PolicyYouth Justice: Taking the Long View Oct 22nd 2014 Roger Smith

  2. Taking the Long View • Overview • Recurrent challenges in youth justice • The evidence of experience • Some uncomfortable truths • Is anything new under the sun? • Thinking differently

  3. Taking the Long View • Recurrent challenges • Problematising the young (‘respectable fears’) • Polarising childhood (cf Edinburgh study) • Punishment or rehabilitation? • Proving anything (what causes crime and ‘what works’ in tackling it?) • Politicisation of youth justice

  4. Taking the Long View • The evidence of experience • Locating the problem • ‘What is to be done about…?’ • Changing tides – periodicity • Embedded assumptions (eg the tariff) • Practitioners are knowledgeable and committed

  5. Taking the Long View • Some unacceptable truths • The youth justice system has little to do with crime (1 ‘proven’ offence/12 reported crimes) • The youth justice system is largely ineffective (re-offending rates increase with intensity of sanction) • The youth justice system causes harm (exclusion, physical harm, loss of opportunities) • The youth justice system is unfair (progressive over-representation of Black/Mixed Heritage young people)

  6. Taking the Long View • Is anything new under the sun? • Falling crime rates • Arrests down by a third, 2000/01-2010/11 • Children proceeded against down by two thirds • BUT • 60% adults believed crime was rising in 2011 • 65% believed a lack of parental discipline caused crime (2010)

  7. Taking the Long View • Thinking differently? • Reinventing diversion • Re-emphasising restorative practice • AND • Rediscovering rights • Renewing rehabilitation

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