Editorial

Citation

Bateman, T. and Smithson, H. (2016), "Editorial", Safer Communities, Vol. 15 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SC-02-2016-0001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Safer Communities, Volume 15, Issue 2.

Tim Bateman and Hannah Smithson

Efforts to improve community safety and reduce offending have in recent years involved, in one way or another, a focus on risk management and have often been influenced by risk aversion. The articles in the current edition of Safer Communities each engages with notions of risk in one way or another.

Youth justice and the adult criminal justice system continue to show markedly different trajectories. For instance, between 2007 and 2015, the number of first time entrants to the youth justice system fell by a remarkable 81 per cent, while the reduction for adults was a more modest 41 per cent. At the other end of the system, the number of children sentenced to custody declined by 69 per cent over the same period; by contrast, custodial disposals for adults over the age of 21 years rose by 17 per cent (Ministry of Justice/Youth Justice Board, 2016). These comparative successes in reducing the criminalisation and incarceration of children, while enhancing considerably the safety of communities, have also allowed significant savings to the public purse. In addition to the reduced costs of processing children through the justice system and accommodating them in custodial facilities, resources allocated to youth offending teams have also contracted by almost a third since 2009 (Ministry of Justice/Youth Justice Board, 2016).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, such changes to the youth justice landscape have led to considerable discussion about the future direction of provision for children who offend. In September 2015, Michael Gove, Minister of Justice, announced a fundamental review of the youth justice system to be led by Charlie Taylor, whose remit includes considering whether the existing arrangements are effective in “achieving value for money” (Ministry of Justice, 2015).

At the time of writing, the outcome of the review – which is due to report in summer 2016 – is unknown but Stephen Case and Ben Byrne’s article in this edition of Safer Communities offers an important contribution to the debate by exploring the principles that ought to inform a “positive youth justice”. They contend that a progressive, and effective, system for dealing with children in trouble should cohere around four such principles: children’s rights and adults’ responsibilities; desistance and inclusion; diversion and systems management; and relationship-based partnerships between children and practitioners. Adopting such a framework, the authors suggest, would pose a direct challenge to the dynamics of the approach established under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which has characterised youth justice practice in the intervening period.

The first principle endorses a rights based approach and argues that contrary to the prevalent ethos of responsibilising children for their offending, adults working in youth justice system have a responsibility for ensuring that children are able to access their entitlements. It is suggested that the “children first, offender second” strategy developed in Wales has the potential to represent a practical articulation of such an approach.

The second principle points to the importance of mainstreaming of preventive services and an inclusive approach to youth justice intervention. Case and Byrne argue that promotion of desistance is best achieved through an inclusive restorative practice which they contrast to variants of restoration that involve “directing blame, shame and responsibility on to children”. They suggest that the dominant youth offending team model does not easily lend itself to the achievement of such outcomes since it tends to divorce services for children who offend from those for children in need of care and protection in spite of an extensive overlap between the two populations. They cite the example of Surrey, which has consciously abandoned that model in favour of an integrated service for young people irrespective of the reason for referral, as an instantiation of a more progressive response that seeks to avoid bureaucratic processing of children, multiple referrals and assessments and aims to promote prevention, diversion and engagement.

The third principle derives from evidence of the criminogenic nature of system contact which highlights the necessity of maximising diversion and restricting formal intervention to the minimum necessary. The Bureau model adopted in Swansea is described as a partnership systems management approach predicated on an assumption of diverting children from formal sanctions to positive activities that tackle the underlying causes of offending. The Youth Justice Board for Wales has now committed to rolling out the Bureau model across all local authority areas in Wales.

The final principle contrasts practice based on positive relationships between children and practitioners with a risk management and risk averse approach that has tended to dominate contemporary youth justice interactions and acts to discourage the engagement of children as co-producers of service provision.

The authors conclude that the youth justice review represents an opportunity for a turn towards a more positive practice and that the likely shift towards devolution offers a potential for local configuration of arrangements to deliver a more positive youth justice.

Amy Kirby’s article considering volunteering opportunities for young adults, aged 18-25, with criminal records also engages with the implications of risk aversion albeit through a different lens. Against a policy background that has increasingly promoted young people’s involvement in the provision of “unpaid help”, almost half of the 16-25 population report having volunteered at least once in the past year with more than a third volunteering at least once a month.

The study found that agencies providing volunteering opportunities, including a national resettlement organisation, perceived that ex-offenders were frequently better placed to engage with users of the service than non-offenders because of shared experiences and backgrounds. Volunteer involving organisations also noted that volunteers had a high level of commitment and retention rates were good. The perceived benefits of volunteering for volunteers themselves included improving self-esteem, building social capital, the development of a routine, providing an opportunity to consider what they wanted to do longer term and, for a smaller proportion, preparation for employment: such benefits chiming well with the literature on strengths based desistance. The sense of achievement and the opportunity to give something back to the community was considered to be an important advantage of involvement in making an unpaid contribution. Some respondents also noted the potential to reduce stigmatisation of ex-offenders within the broader community, challenging stereotypes, and reducing exaggerated fears.

Concerns to mitigate risk and safeguarding procedures, however, posed significant challenges for organisations seeking to offer volunteering opportunities. While not precluding the use of volunteers, some participants considered that volunteer involving organisations tended to adopt a risk averse approach towards Disclosure and Barring Service checks, requiring them for all potential volunteers, whether or not they were they were appropriate given the nature of the volunteering activity. Blanket policies designed to mitigate risk were sometimes implemented at the expense of effective and sensible safeguarding procedures.

An additional difficulty for many organisations was providing appropriate supervision to young ex-offenders, many of whom were acknowledged to have high level support needs.

Correspondingly some young people were considered not to be “ready” to volunteer. Such attitudes were compounded by an antipathy towards volunteering among some young people who had been forced to engage in unpaid work as a punishment or condition of benefit. The nature of the volunteering activity was also important to young people who were more likely to engage if they could see the potential benefits for themselves in terms of future prospects or matching their interests. Some professionals noted that some young people had unrealistic expectations in this regard and could become easily disenchanted.

Kirby concludes that increasing volunteering opportunities for young ex-offenders requires, among other things, a nuanced approach to risk and safeguarding, a pro-active approach on the part of agencies who wish to engage volunteers, the provision of adequate support, and volunteering activities that provide tangible benefits to young people.

The management of risk also underpins the article by Bowen and colleagues which explores the views of sex offenders in relation to sex offending registration in the USA. A series of legislative developments have seen: the establishment of a database in all states of persons convicted of sex offences, with information being stored for a minimum of ten years to a maximum of life; the subsequent opening of the registry to the public in 1996, through Megan’s Law, providing information to communities on convicted offenders in their locality to promote awareness of potential risks and deter further offending; and the creation of an Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking to oversee federal sex offender policy. As a consequence of these developments, approximately three quarters of a million Americans are now required to register.

The article, drawing on a study of 286 male registered sex offenders in three states, considers respondents’ views of the registry and various aspects of effectiveness. Previous research has found a range of unintended consequences associated with sex offender registration including: impeding reintegration though a negative impact on accommodation and employment prospects; the harassment of registrants and other forms of negative community reactions; and the impact on self-worth and attitudes towards compliance with registration requirements. Such “collateral” consequences can also include the impact on family members of sex offenders, including increasing strain on intra-family relationships, leading to feelings of shame and stigmatisation, and avoidance of social activities.

The current study found that the more collateral consequences respondents had experienced as a result of registration, the more negative were their perceptions of the registration process and the less likely they were to indicate that they would comply with its requirements. Moreover, increases in perceived negative implications on family members was correlated with decreased feelings of self-worth and with respondents being less likely to report that they would avoid future sex offending. Increased public recognition as a consequence of being on the registry also led to diminished self-esteem and a lower regard of the registration process. As a consequence, measures intended to reduce risk did not always have that effect. On the other hand, there did appear to be a deterrent effect where registration led to contact with law enforcement agencies: registrants who had never been contacted by police were significantly less likely to indicate that they were less likely to commit another sexual offence.

Chris Fox and colleagues offer an important assessment of criminal justice policy under the Coalition Government between 2010 and 2015 to provide a baseline for commentators wishing to analyse the direction of travel under the current conservative administration. The authors argue that criminal justice policy during the relevant period was framed by two significant contextual factors: austerity and the fall in crime. The former led the Coalition to seek significant reductions in the police budget (in excess of 20 per cent between 2011 and 2015); and a 27 per cent fall in expenditure by the Ministry of Justice between 2010 and 2014. The latter, which included a 10 per cent in decline during the Coalition’s period in power as recorded by the Crime Survey for England and Wales, held the prospect of generating savings in the criminal justice arena. However, this potential was circumscribed by the stability of the prison population in spite of the fall in offending, a lack of acknowledgement on the part of the public that crime was less of an issue than previously, and shifts in the nature of offending towards cyber-crime, fraud, trafficking, and terrorism.

In terms of policing, the paper notes that the establishment of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) was an attempt by government to improve police – public relations, but to date there is limited evidence that this new form of accountability has enhanced those relations. At the same time, the establishment of the College of Policing was indicative of an increased focus on evidence-based policing. Moreover, these new institutional arrangements might, the authors argue, been seen as diminishing the authority of the police themselves. Moreover, tensions have emerged between evidence-based decision making and the need to accommodate public opinion and the political inclinations of PCCs.

It is their discussion of developments in the sphere of prisons and probation that Fox and his colleagues note the centrality of a policy of marketisation as a mechanism for reducing levels of reoffending. They suggest that the evidence of impact to date in relation to the payment by results pilot at Doncaster prison and the social impact bond at Peterborough prison “are very disappointing” for the government, particularly given that pilots typically generate better outcomes than any subsequent roll out. So far as probation is concerned, the Government’s strategy was similarly focused on introducing an extensive programme of competition with most community-based services for offenders transferred to Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs), with only highest risk cases remaining with the newly established National Probation Service.

Having described the landscape, the authors set out some of the themes that emerge. First there is a tension between devolution and centralisation with PCCs and CRCs indicative of the former while the College of Policing and the creation of the National Probation Service tend in the opposite direction. Second there has been an extensive tendency towards marketization with the role of the private sector significantly enlarged, and this shift has in practice been closely aligned to a greater emphasis on payments by results. It is in this context, that Fox and his colleagues address the role of risk. They argue that one of the attractions for the government was that the mechanism allowed a significant transfer of risk to service providers: if targets for reduced reoffending were not met, full payment was not made in line with the need to reduce public spending; if on the other hand the requisite reductions in reoffending were delivered, the strategy of marketization could be presented as a success that would lead to a further contraction of the justice system. Third, the authors identify a further tension between depoliticisation and politicisation of criminal justice. The former is exemplified in the transfer of accountability from ministerial responsibility for significant elements of delivery to PCCs and CRCs; at the same time, the creation of these new agencies is itself “deeply ideological”. Fourth, the Coalition advanced an agenda that promoted the development of evidence-based policy, though this too was circumscribed by the need to accommodate public opinion and the pragmatism embodied in the reliance on payment by results to deliver desired outcomes without a clear evidence base.

In the final contribution to this issue, Stuart Kirby offers a positive assessment in his review of Karen Evan’s new book on community and crime. He advises potential readers that they should be aware that it is written from a critical criminology perspective and cites the author’s own explanation that the discourse is less about what community is, focusing instead on how the term is used by governments to “confer rights upon some groups and to exclude others from exercising those rights”; the concern is less to explore crime prevention and more to illuminate how the concept of community is deployed within agendas of crime control, which while originating in the West now have a global purchase. Having clarified the subject matter, Kirby provides a wholehearted endorsement that this “an extremely important book that fills a gap in the market in relation to a pervasive subject”.

References

Ministry of Justice (2015), “Review of the youth justice system: terms of reference”, Ministry of Justice, London.

Ministry of Justice/Youth Justice Board (2016), “Youth justice annual statistics 2014/15”, Ministry of Justice, London.