The State of Youth Justice 2020: an Overview of Trends and Developments
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The state of youth justice 2020 An overview of trends and developments Dr Tim Bateman* * The author has produced the report at the behest of the NAYJ Board of Trustees who have approved and adopted the contents. The NAYJ is a registered charity (no. 1138177) and membership organisation campaigning for the rights of – and justice for – children in trouble with the law. www.thenayj.org.uk i Foreword It is a privilege to write this Foreword to The State of Youth Justice 2020. This third instalment in the series, which began in 2015, is even more impressive than its predecessors. Our gratitude to Tim for such an in-depth analysis that draws on his experience of research, policy and practice and contributes considerably to our knowledge and understanding of the youth justice system in England and Wales. Two developments this year are so significant that they impact on our understandings of the state of the youth justice system and its wider societal context. The first is the global pandemic of the Covid-19 virus, the second is the heightened prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement in social and political discourse. As noted in the report itself (Chapters 1 and 8 in particular), many of the findings relate to the experiences of children prior to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. Whilst it is too early to assess the full implications for children in prison, a number of consequences are already clear. In particular, changes to regimes to accommodate social distancing have already had disturbing consequences. In two of three Young Offenders Institutions (YOIs) inspected, it was confirmed that children’s educational activities were limited to worksheets in their cells; the third establishment was able to provide just two hours face-to-face education on school days. The time children spent out of cell varied from three hours a day to just 40 minutes. Contact with the outside world has been curtailed, with the consequence that children no longer have any face-to-face interaction with families or friends, nor visits from social workers, YOT staff or lawyers. We are storing up a range of problems that will not be easily dealt with later. Whilst there has been a welcome reduction in the number of children entering the youth justice system and subject to its interventions, the reductions have not benefitted all children equally. As the system has contracted over the last decade, the overrepresentation of minority ethnic children, particularly Black and mixed heritage children, has become more pronounced. The disproportionality increases as children move deeper into the system: more than half of those currently deprived of their liberty derive from a minority background. Children in care are also more likely than their peers in the general population to be criminalised. Inequalities are evident too in the treatment of children from different backgrounds when they are detained in the secure estate. Concrete action by government and others to address ii these issues has been extremely limited, with little progress to celebrate. These issues are not new for the youth justice system, and indeed have been highlighted by the Association in previous years. The pandemic and wider social developments offer opportunities for the government to see matters differently and take alternative action. This publication focuses very much on children affected by the youth justice system. It is more apparent than ever that we need to think more about how the youth justice system interacts with the rest of the criminal system, wider social institutions and indeed society in England and Wales as a whole. It is important not to divorce youth justice from broader developments that affect poor and disadvantaged children across our countries in a variety of ways. On behalf of the Board of Trustees at The NAYJ, we are delighted to be able to make such a useful contribution freely available on our website. This is with thanks to the contributions of our members over the years. As volunteers, we are very pleased that your contributions help the charity’s publications remain independent and free from government funding. With your support, we continue to promote the rights of, and justice for, children involved in the youth justice system. Ross Little Deputy Chair, Board of Trustees, The National Association for Youth Justice iii Contents Chapter 1 Child first youth justice: rhetoric or reality? 2 The context for the report ........................................................................................................ 2 What about decriminalisation and decarceration? .................................................................. 7 Youth justice is not an island ..................................................................................................... 9 Purpose of the report .............................................................................................................. 11 Chapter 2 Youth crime is falling. By how much? How do we know? 12 What victims report and police record ................................................................................... 12 Public perceptions ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..16 Smells like teen spirit? – the decline in detected youth crime ............................................... 18 Maybe it was me - self-reported offending ............................................................................ 19 Chapter 3 Making sense of patterns in detected youth crime 22 Free falling … ........................................................................................................................... 22 Better out than in …. ............................................................................................................... 29 Chapter 4 This is what youth crime looks like 43 There’s a lot of it about ........................................................................................................... 33 Point blank .............................................................................................................................. 35 Changes ................................................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 5 This is what a child in conflict with the law looks like 43 What’s a poor child to do? ...................................................................................................... 43 Worth the risk? ....................................................................................................................... 47 Age: Now the years are rolling by me ..................................................................................... 51 Gender: it’s a boy’s world ....................................................................................................... 53 Race and criminalisation ......................................................................................................... 60 Chapter 6 Pre-court formality and informality 66 Watching the detectives ......................................................................................................... 67 Further filters .......................................................................................................................... 75 It’s formal but it’s not court .................................................................................................... 81 Chapter 7 Here comes the judge 87 The framework for trial (and error) ........................................................................................ 87 Sentencing principles or principled sentencing? .................................................................... 93 Showing conviction ................................................................................................................. 95 Chapter 8 Prison blues 102 Custodial trends .................................................................................................................... 102 No estate for children ........................................................................................................... 110 Chapter 9 What’s counted or what counts? Reoffending as success or failure 119 Chapter 10 To the end 124 References 128 1 NAYJ The state of youth justice 2020: An overview of trends and developments Chapter 1 Child first youth justice: rhetoric or reality?1 The context for the report In 2017, the National Association for Youth Justice (NAYJ) characterised the government’s response to the Review of Youth Justice, undertaken by Charlie Taylor (2016), and published the previous year, as a ‘missed opportunity’ (Bateman, 2017:3). While welcoming the continued decline in the number of children subject to formal youth justice proceedings, and the fall in child imprisonment, the Association registered a number of concerns, including the following: Consideration of the age of criminal responsibility had been explicitly excluded from the review Taylor’s proposal for the establishment of Children’s Panels to determine what action would be required to address the child’s behaviour, in lieu of the current system of youth court sentencing, was met with an equivocal commitment on the part of the government to consider how the principles underlying the review’s recommendations in this regard might be met within ‘the current framework’ (Ministry of Justice, 2016:21), a framework fundamentally based around the imposition of orders by a criminal court The government accepted, in principle, Taylor’s (2016: 37) finding