Conceptualising Risk and Need: The Rise of Actuarialism and the Death of Welfare? Practitioner Assessment and Intervention in the Youth Offending Service

Abstract

This article is concerned with the assessment and intervention strategies and processes employed by practitioners working within the Youth Offending Service (YOS) in England and Wales. It draws on interview data with YOS practitioners to investigate assessment and intervention rationales and conceptions of both ‘risk’ and ‘need’ against a backdrop of shifting ideologies and modes of governance in youth justice. The article revisits macro theories of risk and the ‘risk society’, explores theories of modern penality and how conceptions of risk have permeated contemporary youth justice policy and practice through actuarial frameworks of assessment. It is argued that competing rationales in YOT practitioners’ assessments and interventions reveal an active struggle where, despite a managerial/actuarial milieu, some practitioners continue to hold the welfare needs of young people as paramount. The article then reflects on current youth justice policy under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition Government and the effect that their proposed changes may have on practice.

Keywords

assessment discretion risk youth justice

Introduction

In England and Wales all Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) are required to use a standardized risk assessment ‘tool’ called Asset, to gauge the risk of reoffending by children and young people. Although there is a growing body of empirical research looking at the efficacy of the Asset assessment tool, it tends to overlook how practitioners actually carry out assessments and interventions nor does it explore their rationales or motivations against the backdrop of shifting ideologies and modes of governance. This article begins to address such questions by focusing upon how practitioners conceptualize ‘risk’ and ‘need’ and comprehend their role within the assessment and intervention planning process by using data drawn from interviews with youth justice professionals. It further explores the extent to which assessment and intervention decisions/processes reflect actuarial priorities or retain more traditional concepts of welfare.

In what follows, I will begin by exploring macro conceptions of ‘risk’ and the ‘risk society’ alongside the rise of actuarialism or new penology within youth justice and how this has altered traditional practices and agendas relating to the governance of children and young people. The article will then critically explore how actuarial logics have affected assessment practices and – by drawing upon a modest empirical study – examine how youth justice practitioners experience assessing young people’s risks and needs under the framework of Asset. The empirical research corroborates existing evidence that many practitioners retain a sensitivity towards the welfare needs of children and young people and do not simply conceptualize them solely as objects of risk. Addressing the policy–practice relation by exploring the distinctions between policy rhetoric, policy interpretation, and policy implementation (Fergusson, 2007) it will be argued that at one level practitioners are rendered subordinate to the administration’s objectives and feel constrained in forming their own professional judgments. Despite such constraints, however, practitioners also deviate from ‘official’ policy prescriptions, regulations, guidance and standards regarding risk and place welfare and need firmly back onto the agenda. The article concludes that competing rationales in YOT practitioners’ assessments and interventions reveal an active struggle where, despite a managerial/actuarial milieu, some practitioners continue to hold the welfare needs of young people as paramount. In this way it is argued that tensions exist when policy encounters the ‘complexity and vicissitudes of real life’ practice (Eadie and Canton, 2002).

Theorising Risk: From ‘Risk Society’ to ‘Risk Factors’

A number of commentators have observed that rather than focusing on the benefits and positive possibilities of modernity, the late modern ‘risk society’ emphasizes the negatives and is characterized by attempts to ‘manage’ a series of hazards (Beck 1992; Kelly, 2001; Kemshall, 2003; Mythen, 2007). Thus risk analysis has become ingrained within both the public and private spheres and modes of governance are directed towards:

… bringing possible future undesired events into calculations in the present, making their avoidance the central object of decision making processes, and administering individuals, institutions, expertise and resources in the service of that ambition. (Rose, in Hudson, 2003: 44)

The ‘risk society’ thesis posits that the corrosion of traditional societal bonds has resulted in widespread distrust amongst modern citizens (Hudson, 2003; Kemshall, 2003). In particular, it has been suggested that risk, crime and youth have become synonymous in modern popular discourse (Haines and Case, 2008; Kemshall, 2008). Young people are increasingly perceived as ‘posing a risk’ or are ‘at risk’ of partaking in criminal behaviour (Armstrong, 2004; Haines and Case, 2008; Kemshall, 2008; Smith, 2006). Ultimately youth has become ‘an index of civilisation’ whereby the health of the nation is projected onto the behaviour of the young (Jenks, 1996 cited in Stokes, 2000: 66).

As modernism is characterized by an expectation that all of nature’s and society’s ills – including youth crime – will be conquered by documenting and addressing risk, the risk society engenders an expectation of security that can never be realized (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990; Kemshall, 2003) and, in turn, this creates a distrust of expert knowledge and professional discretion (Webb, 2006). Practitioners in youth justice are no exception. Their professional decisions face routine distrust and are increasingly challenged by a more sophisticated yet sceptical society (Hudson, 2003; Kemshall, 2002, 2003; Webb, 2006). Youth justice practitioners routinely face accusations of leniency and an inability to ‘deal’ with problem youth, failure to prevent further offending and/or effectively address anti-social behaviour (Hudson, 2003).

Likewise, risk discourse emphasises the role of individualisation, responsibilization and active citizenship (Giddens, 1990; Kelly, 2001; Kemshall, 2008; O’Malley, 2009, 2010). Individuals are perceived as shapers of their own worlds ‘making decisions according to calculations of risk and opportunity’ (Petersen, 1996 cited in Kemshall, 2008: 22) or, as O’Malley (2009) terms it, ‘prudentialism’. Kelly (2001) contends that this discourse individualizes risk and responsibilizes young people and their families with the duty to ensure its efficient management. In this way, the individualized culpability-laden language of risk converts social and communal risks into individual ones (Rose, 1996 cited in Kemshall, 2008). It follows that governance in neo-liberal societies is conducted at the ‘molecular level’, in which the active citizen is expected to self-rule and those who fail, or refuse to do so, are demonized and excluded (Kelly, 2001; Rose, 1996 cited in Kemshall, 2008).

A reflection of the ‘risk society’ thesis is to be found in contemporary penality in burgeoning and consolidating conceptions of risk as a key theme (Garland, 2003: 45). Simon and Feeley (2003) and Feeley and Simon (1994) have contended that a new penology has emerged in the form of an actuarialist approach to crime management that relies on positivistic techniques for identifying, categorizing and managing groups with reference to their perceived level of dangerousness (Feeley and Simon, 1994; Kempf-Leonard and Peterson, 2000; Silver and Miller, 2002; Simon and Feeley, 2003;). Scientific means of calculating the potential for the commission of offences and the application of managerial techniques are deployed to control the potential danger to the community (Hudson, 2003). In the youth justice sphere the new penology is arguably most clearly expressed through the concept of ‘risk factors’.

Risk, Actuarialism and Modern Youth Justice Policy and Practice

The history of modern youth justice in England and Wales is beset with conflict, incongruity and imprecision (Muncie and Hughes, 2002) and as such policy analysis is a challenging exercise (Goldson, 2010; Muncie, 2006). With the election of the first New Labour Government in 1997 an assortment of wide-ranging and far-reaching reforms for the governance of children and young people were implemented (Goldson and Muncie, 2006). It is an approach that appeals to hybrid ideologies and ways of working amongst which the concepts of risk, actuarialism and individual responsibilization are central.

Identifying the factors that are thought to precipitate delinquency and youth crime has largely been pioneered by David Farrington whose work has been hugely influential within modern youth justice policy and practice in England and Wales and elsewhere. West and Farrington’s (1973) early work suggested that there are a range of factors which increase the prospect of juvenile criminality including: restlessness and limited concentration; low intelligence and limited cognitive functioning; harsh and/or erratic parental supervision and discipline; social and economic deprivation (see also: Farrington, 1996, 2006). Informed by the work of Farrington, a risk factor approach or ‘risk factor prevention paradigm’ (RFPP) has arguably become the dominant discourse in youth justice in England and Wales (Case and Haines, 2009; Haines and Case, 2008). Indeed, the RFPP is the cornerstone of contemporary youth justice policy and practice and is reflected in the standardized assessment and intervention strategies promulgated by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) (Case and Haines, 2009; Goldson and Hughes, 2010). Such reform has had a profound effect on practitioners working in the system particularly in the area of assessment: workers’ practice and knowledge is more tightly regulated by centrally imposed national standards, audits and targets as the professional ‘contract’ with children and young people becomes increasingly more arduous, technical and subject to breach proceedings (Goldson, 2010). In short, assessment, risk analysis and risk management have assumed paramount importance (Baker, 2004, 2008; Dugmore, 2006; Whyte, 2009).

Risk Assessment: Is Asset an Asset?

Asset is the standard assessment ‘tool’ used by all YOTS used in England and Wales (Baker, 2004; Dugmore, 2006; Whyte, 2009) and was introduced by the YJB in 2000 (Baker, 2008). It uses statistical algorithms to categorise individuals into population subgroups with shared characteristics and comparable levels of risk (Silver and Miller, 2002). The tool aims to identify static and dynamic risk factors associated with offending behaviour and is designed to inform interventions directed towards the prevention of youth criminality (Baker, 2004; Whyte, 2009).¹ Practitioners score using a Likert scale from zero to four to indicate the extent to which they judge each risk factor to be associated with the likelihood of further offending (Baker, 2008). The total Asset score is deemed to provide a prediction of the likelihood of further offending.

Research suggests that Asset provides some degree of reliability (Baker, 2004, 2005; Baker et al., 2003; Bonta, 2002; Ferguson, 2002).² The introduction of Asset in 2000 significantly changed the nature and scope of assessment (Dugmore, 2006). While the YJB view Asset as having a positive impact on the processes of assessment and intervention, responses from YOT professionals are more ambiguous (Baker, 2005; Burnett and Appleton, 2004). In youth justice, risk assessment tools have been grafted into a culture in which professionals traditionally exercise discretion and judgment (Baker, 2004). Eadie and Canton (2002) point out that imposed tools (such as Asset) alongside centrally prescribed ‘national standards’, can lead to conflict between accommodating managerialist dictates on the one hand, and exercising professional knowledge, values and principles on the other or, to put it another way, between adhering to standardized technical tools and exercising autonomous professional judgment (Baker, 2005; Sutherland, 2009). This can produce conditions of ‘compliance drift’ (Innes, 2003 in Sutherland, 2009) whereby practitioners adopt a ‘pick and mix’ approach (Burnett and Appleton, 2004).

Exploring Practitioner Conceptualizations of Risk: Aims and Methods

The limited number of studies that have sought to investigate the assessment and intervention practices of YOT and probation practitioners have largely relied upon a method of analysing samples of completed assessments (see, for example: Baker, 2004, 2005, 2008; Baker et al., 2003; Sutherland, 2009). While such analyses have revealed a great deal of quantitative data regarding levels of assessed/perceived risk at pre- and post-intervention (Sutherland, 2009), such analyses are limited by what is physically recorded by the practitioner which is problematic, not least because there is evidence that suggests that YOT practitioners frequently neglect to complete Asset assessments fully and do not always give clear evidence/reasoning for their decisions (Baker, 2004). Furthermore, such methods fail to explore the wider processes of assessment decision-making, the influences of institutions on practice and subtle nuances of practitioners’ thinking. This is supported by evidence which the research presented here aimed to address through a number of central questions and subsidiary issues. For the purposes of this article the following questions are key:

How do practitioners conceptualize risk and need and their role within the assessment and intervention planning process?

How do assessed risks/needs inform intervention?

To what extent do assessment and intervention decisions/processes demonstrate concepts and assumptions of actuarialism and/or welfare/ treatment?

The research comprised semi-structured interviews with 14 YOT practitioners: nine females and five males; eight professionally qualified social workers; two unqualified social workers; two police officers and two senior managers (one of whom was also a professionally qualified social worker). At least half of the social workers had less than five years practice experience whilst the others were very experienced, having worked in youth justice for more than 15 years (and other areas such as probation and children’s services). The police officers were experienced in terms of general policing but had more limited experience in youth justice. The senior managers had substantial experience of both youth justice and adult criminal justice work.

Findings

Conceptualising ‘risk’ and ‘need’

For the majority of YOT practitioners in the sample the concept of risk and its role within assessment was difficult to conceptualize. No ‘working definition’ of risk could be agreed because it was felt to be multifaceted. The complex nature of risk was illustrated by the following responses:

Well risk is so hard to get to grips with; there are so many risks involved you know… to the community, to yourself or others, risk of re-offending. (Practitioner 5)

Well what kinds of risk are we talking about you see? Risk to who or what? Risk of harm or risk of danger to others…. (Practitioner 14)

The Asset was frequently problematized by practitioners who struggled to engage with the concept of an assessment tool, particularly with creating numerical conceptions of risk:

I still struggle with actually what that scoring means, and how you apply it. I think it’s very difficult. (Practitioner 7)

… the scoring doesn’t really tell you anything, it’s hard to know what it means really. It’s very subjective…. I think everyone is always unsure about the scoring…. (Practitioner 14)

But no you can’t predict what these kids might do next, and no kind of assessment tool is going to help you do that. (Practitioner 6)

The practitioners’ hazy conceptions of risk and assessment echoes research on probation officers who struggled to succinctly define the concept and instead viewed it as multidimensional (Fitzgibbon, 2007; Kemshall, 1996a, 1996b).

Practitioners 7 and 14 above illustrate wider scepticism in respect of quantifying risk by using a scoring matrix, whereas practitioner 6 is not untypical in querying Asset’s capacity to provide accurate predictions of risks of re-offending. Indeed, the assessment of children and young people and their potential risks using statistical tools did not appeal to practitioners, rather interviewees willingly conceded that individuals and the worlds they inhabit are complex, even incomprehensible at times and certainly not open to accurate risk calculation (see also: Roberts et al., 2001 in Baker, 2005).

Practitioners struggling with conceptions of risk inherent in the Asset tool and with viewing children and young people as objects of risk was further compounded by the prescriptive nature of centralized standards. Indeed, ‘National Standards’ regulate practice pertaining to: assessment; planning and carrying out interventions; recording; report writing; procedures for responding to non-compliance (YJB, 2004). Practitioners felt their practice was being unduly constrained and subjected to administrative technical uniformity that imposed problematic rigidity and detracted from individually tailored professional practice:

You are restricted. I feel restricted…. (Practitioner 4)

I find that a lot of time is spent filling in these forms and assessment and intervention tools, I personally don’t find useful. It’s impacted on me in the sense that it has taken time away from things that I would say are more helpful in protecting the public and helping the young person not re-offend. (Practitioner 9)

I have got a 14 year-old, mum kicks him out every five minutes… and Children and Families won’t put him into care so they have placed him with his sister who has just got out of being sectioned. So that is the chaos of that young person and I know the YOS is right at the bottom of his agenda, but therefore I still have to breach. (Practitioner 3)

A related concern for some of the practitioners regarded excessive central monitoring of assessments and interventions which further undermined their sense of professional identity and integrity:

Why do they [the YJB] need to see it [assessments and intervention plans], I feel like I am being checked. Managers trawl through the assessments files on the computer systems, and I have often been asked why hasn’t x, y and z been done. I say I have done it but it’s going to be recorded soon. And I feel that I am being questioned, examined and that I’m lying to them. Why would I lie? (Practitioner 7)

For some practitioners imposed methods of working were compromising their capacity to meet the needs of children and young people:

I’m not really sure that I am being a social worker as a YOT worker. (Practitioner 1)

I think the reason that social workers feel uncomfortable often in the YOT is because they’re not resourced to deal with the welfare issues… we’re resourced to deal with the offending. So we have to pass on the welfare issues and sort of let go of them to a certain extent, which doesn’t sit well with why anyone would go into social work. (Practitioner 12)

We need to fill out a sheet with interventions on, we need to come up with three or four interventions, so because my ability to attend to welfare needs properly is severely constrained, inevitably I will come up with the three or four interventions which I think are the easiest to secure and deliver which on the whole are interventions related to offending behaviour and consequential thinking programmes. (Practitioner 7)

While the practitioners engaged the discourses of assessment and risk (albeit critically), it was also apparent that there was an underlying professional value system at play that was far more significant in driving assessments and intervention:

I tend not to focus solely on the offence or their offending. To me the offence, and this isn’t the official line, the offence is a by-product of the things that have gone wrong in that young person’s life which are on the main are welfare concerns. (Practitioner 13)

See the thing is my assessment is not the proper way of doing things, but I believe that because I am looking at the issues that run deeper than the presenting problem of the offending. When I am assessing, I do look at the factors such as the area that they are living, who they offend with, drinking behaviour etc., but what I feel I do is look deeper (respondent’s own emphasis) than that, deeper than those risk factors and look at the underlying problems which is almost always welfare needs. (Practitioner 11)

So if you are going to miss out half the issues which relate to welfare and only look at the risk offending you aren’t going to get anywhere are you? (Practitioner 9)

Here practitioners go beyond narrow conceptions of risk and, by going deeper, embrace the complexities of children’s and young people’s biographies and social and material circumstances. To put it another way, assessing welfare needs rather than assessing risk was considered key:

… every single offence is violent… he keeps fighting…. Now Oscar (fictitious name) isn’t a criminal. He is one of seven children, mum only loves the eldest one, he is the second one, the family is chaotic and a lot of deprivation. They actually go on holiday and leave that child at home. Every offence bar one that he has been involved with has been some issue around the family and someone dissing [sic] the family and someone beating up his little brother. So that’s all connected to that isn’t it… that’s all how he feels about himself and his poor attachment to his family. He is not some violent menace to society is he? He hits people because it is something to do with family which are ultimately welfare needs…. If you take a hundred cases from the YOT, 90 per cent of them are going to have welfare needs aren’t they… and there are going to be social issues there. OK you might get the odd one where it’s an off the wall offence but there is always going to be welfare needs and you have got to balance that…. You’ve got a handful of them haven’t you that are actually a risk to themselves or the public. (Practitioner 1)

You know you have two sort of scales in your head almost, one is about what makes people offend and risk factors, and the second is about, I suppose, you know ‘Every Child Matters’… but to me it’s about welfare not risks. (Practitioner 7)

Practitioner discretion

In response to the ‘official’ emphasis on risk management, it was evident from the interview data that practitioners were striving to maintain their professional autonomy and to address children’s welfare needs. An adaptive process of reinterpreting official guidance was evident in the Asset rating system. Guidance states that YOT practitioners should rate the 12 dynamic risk factors according to how much they are linked and related to young people’s offending behaviour (YJB, 2004). A dynamic risk factor, such as substance misuse, mental health or familial relationships, should only be scored highly, therefore, if that factor is related to offending behaviour. It was apparent from the data that practitioners had problems with this system and in fact circumvented the guidance:

If you score low for factors that don’t appear to be related to offending but it is abundantly clear that they are presenting with high needs, basically the rules are bypassed and you would score them higher in the hope that they will be addressed. If you score an Asset as it should be done you are not necessarily meeting the needs of that young person. (Practitioner 8)

There wasn’t any criminal offending risks going on there but it was purely welfare issues that forced that score well up. (Practitioner 10)

If you have got something that is a problem which you really don’t think is related to the offending it is really hard to score that low. (Practitioner 4)

You know the kid needs a service in a particular area, which is not necessarily leading to the offending, but you think if you put a high score they’re more likely to get it. For some services, the services have an agreement saying, for example mental health, if they score three or four they’ll get an appointment with the health worker within five days. Those sorts of things, whereas, in fact, if they have a need they have a need, and they shouldn’t be less of a priority because it’s not linked to their offending. (Practitioner 11)

Practitioners increased scores in particular areas in the hope that perceived needs could be addressed. Despite threshold criteria practitioners appeared to place high scores for children’s needs even though it was not ‘officially’ linked to their offending behaviour. In essence practitioners have repackaged welfare needs as risks in order to provide and justify intervention.

A focus on welfare needs and ‘treatment’ is not at the heart of risk based interventions. Practitioners have, however, attempted to create their own rules regarding the allocation of treatment/welfare based interventions. The rise of the new penology and risk-factor discourse might be interpreted as signalling the death of welfare-driven services (Valverde et al., 2005), but there is evidence of practitioner resistance that is serving to sustain a welfare based focus on ‘need’.

Discussion

It is clear that YOT practitioner assessment and intervention is a complex process which utilizes a number of, often competing, rationales, belief systems and ways of working to inform practice with children and young people. Perhaps this is unsurprising since contemporary youth justice practice is set against a milieu of different philosophies and ideologies including: restoration; rehabilitation; retribution and punishment. It is problematic to prioritize anyone of these modes of governance as acting in isolation (Muncie, 2006) but, ultimately, it appears that two underlying philosophies in regard to the assessment and governance of children and young people – managerialism/actuarialism and welfarism – are pre-eminent This conflict can clearly be seen in the narratives of the YOT practitioners.

While practitioners employed the technical language of risk and risk factors their decision making was underpinned by concerns with welfare. Interviewees believed welfare needs to be at the heart of assessment and viewed children and young people as presenting with such needs rather than solely as posing risks. Despite the use of official language, therefore, practitioners were uncomfortable in assessing and dealing with children and young people as objects of risk.

Conflict between administrators/managers and practitioners has a long history in the social work professions (Castel, 1991). It is a recurring theme in the professional narrative to regard administrative exigencies as the main impediment to the deployment of a caring or therapeutic activity worthy of the name. But in Castel’s (1991) essay on dangerousness and risk he posits that in the classical system this conflict of positions was acted out between two almost equal partners or, to a certain extent, it left space for negotiation and compromise. This negotiation – even collaboration – between administrators and practitioners formed the basis of policy. However, Kelly (2001) argues that this complicated contention-ridden relationship is falling apart, with the introduction of actuarialism. Administrative institutions, like the YJB, have acquired a great deal of autonomy and have almost complete control over actuarial assessment tools and computerized data systems (Kelly, 2001; Silver and Miller, 2002). It might appear that practitioners on the ground have become a simple auxiliary to the administration. Risk information can be channelled and processed in a manner completely outside the influence of trained professionals using computerized data handling (Silver and Miller, 2002). By combining actuarial assessment technology with computer technology there is at least potential for YOT professionals to be rendered subordinate to the objectives of the administration and its managers. In this way, actuarial risk assessment ‘augments administrative rationalisation and control’ (Silver and Miller, 2002: 144). Here lies the source of fundamental disequilibrium. The relation that directly connected professional knowledge and practical intervention (for better or worse) is eroded. Castel (1991) suggests that practitioners are made completely subordinate to objectives of administrative policy if they no longer control the application of the data they produce. Likewise, it has been said that the new penology renders the practitioner subordinate to the objectives of the administration as it ‘holds all the cards and controls the game’ (Castel, 1991: 293). However as the interview data illustrates, within these constraints, practitioners have attempted to remain autonomous which has resulted in official standards, guidance and regulations being subverted. Aspects of the neo-liberal agenda inherent in the youth justice system have been adapted and reinterpreted through the mediums of welfare and need.

Practitioners striving to remain autonomous or subverting managerial agendas is not a new phenomenon in the public services (Barnes and Prior, 2009; Prior, 2009). Lipsky’s (1980) classic work on ‘street level bureaucrats’ shows that for low level practitioners in bureaucracies, such as social workers and police officers, who were under immense pressure in respect of finite resources and time, discretionary practice and subversion of policy control is a critical dimension of their work (Lipsky, 2010). More recently and in relation to youth justice, Prior (2009) suggests the implementation of the New Labour Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) strategies indicated pockets of resistance amongst practitioners and partnerships responsible for rolling out the agenda. The ASB strategy had a strong discourse of ‘enforcement’ but discretionary and resistant practice by practitioners from the local Children’s Funds centred on prevention (based on meeting welfare needs) through child, family and community development rather than ‘enforcement’ of ASB legal civil measures (Mason and Prior, 2008 in Prior, 2009).

Equally, with the highly directive and prescriptive shaping of national youth justice policy and practice in England and Wales, similar subversion and resistance can be found at the local level (Goldson and Hughes, 2010). Furthermore, Hughes’ research into Welsh community safety partnerships found that:

The often unstable and contradictory governance outcomes in community safety and neighbourhood policing in this case, depend on contingencies of power, negotiation, struggle and resistance and the existence of subaltern discourses. (Hughes and Rowe, 2007: 332)

Resistance, subversion, bargaining and the exercise of professional discretion alert us to the fact that national policies, such as Asset, are subject to alteration, contestation and reconfiguration by actors on the ground. The findings presented in this article, which are corroborated by further evidence of practitioner discretion and resistance, are illustrative of the ‘corruption’ inherent within the policy process and show the disparities between policy rhetoric, policy interpretation and policy ‘as the lived experience’ of implementation (Fergusson, 2007: 182). The data presented here, together with the wider literature, suggests that discretionary practice and subversion of national policies has allowed some practitioners to place the welfare needs of children and young people back on the agenda. Although managerialism is alive and well, through discretionary practice principles of welfarism are still bubbling under the surface.

A note of caution is needed here however. Dismantling national structures and allowing increased discretion is not the panacea for a more enlightened justice. An awareness of the ‘discriminatory potential’ (Eadie and Canton, 2002) of many decisions made by practitioners in the system is imperative. Goldson (1997) has highlighted that the ostensibly progressive approach to youth justice adopted in the 1980s was rife with attitudinal and institutional sexism and racism. Even today such problematic injustices are evident. In 2010/11, for example, 34 per cent of black young people were remanded in custody compared to 22 per cent of white young people (Ministry of Justice, 2012). Likewise black young people made up 17 per cent of the youth prison population compared to three per cent of the general 10–17 population (ibid).

Concluding Comments: Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition Government Policy – Back to the Future?

The election of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government in 2010 apparently signalled a change in policy direction. The Coalition Government’s rhetoric has appeared to signal the dilution of New Labour’s centralist and prescriptive approach to youth justice management. Theresa May, Home Secretary, called the former government’s approach to youth justice and anti-social behaviour ‘top-down, bureaucratic, gimmick-laden’ and stated that there was no:

… magic Whitehall lever we can pull to stop anti-social behaviour… or tap to turn to stop the flow of misery. The solution to your community’s problems will not come from officials sitting in the Home Office working on the latest national action plan. They will come from the homes of our citizens, from the heads of our police officers, council employees and housing associations, and from the hearts of our social workers. (May, 2010)

Soon afterwards the Coalition Government’s Green Paper Breaking the Cycle was published and boldly stated that:

This is a radical and decentralising reform…. Professionals in the public, private and voluntary community sectors will be given much greater discretion. (Ministry of Justice, 2010: para. 37)

and:

We want to achieve an increase in the discretion of frontline professionals…. We will explore, as part of the current review of the system for individual assessments, the potential to increase discretion and reduce the amount of time frontline workers spend in front of their computers, so as to free up their time to work with young offenders. (Ministry of Justice, 2010: para. 265)

As part of the Government’s new agenda in youth justice, in April 2012 the Ministry of Justice revised the Youth Justice National Standards for YOTs. The one year Youth Justice Board Trial National Standards 2012 will provide an opportunity to test and evaluate whether YOTs can have the ‘freedom and flexibility to adapt their practice’ (Youth Justice Board, 2012: 3) in a number of strictly defined areas. One such sphere is in the assessment of young people for out of court disposals. When completing assessments with children and young people for minor offences under the reprimand/ final warning system, the Asset risk assessment scores, which predict risk of recidivism, will be replaced with a structure of ‘professional judgement’.

Looking at the proposed changes, it appears that policy rhetoric is calling for local discretion at multiple levels, from the local management and direction of YOTs to the practitioner on the ground. The most recent policy discourse appears to represent a departure from the centralist youth justice policies of the New Labour Governments and to hark back to the more decentralized and localized practices. Only time will tell whether the Government’s youth justice policy rhetoric will come to fruition. Whatever the outcome further research is required to provide greater understanding and knowledge of discretionary practice in youth justice assessment and how national policy rhetoric may or may not alter practice on the ground.

Footnotes

Notes

Author biography

Damon B. Briggs is a Doctoral Research Student at the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, The University of Liverpool, UK. His research is funded by the ESRC and the Howard League for Penal Reform.

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