Ecological Youth Justice: Understanding the Social Ecology of Young People’s Prolific Offending

Introduction

Youth justice cohorts in England and Wales have shrunk: since 2006–2007, the number of ‘first time entrants’ has fallen by nearly 80 % since 2008–2009, the number of children in custody has dropped by 58 percent (Youth Justice Annual Statistics, http://www.gov.uk). This reduction has exposed a group of young people who are persistent, often prolific in their reoffending. The vast majority of young people who can be diverted from further offending are being diverted, and the group ‘left behind’ comprises those with the most complex needs, manifest in the most challenging behaviours. Recent youth justice responses to this group draw largely on a risk-focused, responsibilising narrative that prescribes more intensive risk management through individualised ‘offender’ and offence-based interventions. This article makes the case for a different approach, arguing that interrupting persistent and prolific offending patterns requires a long-term, relationship-focused approach that supports young people’s positive identity development in its social context. This moves away from the pathologising of behaviour and its need to ‘fix’ the individual towards the normalising of behaviour and working to understand and help address underlying issues.

The research on which this article draws examined young people’s prolific offending in Wales. It comprised two distinct phases. In 2012, the Youth Justice Board Wales (YJB Cymru), working with the Welsh Government, identified 303 young people – about 4 percent of Wales’ youth justice cohort – as ‘prolific’ in their offending and profiled 117 (roughly one-third). The follow-up study (Johns, 2016) examined contextual factors and reoffending among that original sample through analysis of youth offending team (YOT) records, Police National Computer (PNC) reoffending data, in-depth case studies and interviews with professionals and young people. Interviews with some of the (now) young adults yielded rich qualitative insights into the support and social processes that helped them move away from offending. These findings provide the empirical basis for the social-ecological analysis presented here.

For illustrative purposes, we focus on a group of 12 young people – including one young woman – living in a post-industrial community in Wales, and the YOT workers who supervised and supported them through their teenage years. Pseudonyms are used to protect identities. A social-ecological lens is applied as a way of exploring the interactions and relationships between these young people and their particular social, cultural and community setting. This article briefly critiques the dominant paradigm framing youth justice, considers an alternative strengths-based approach to young people’s positive development, explores literature considering the importance of relationships in working with young people and outlines the social-ecological approach arising from it. This leads into the analysis of the research findings from a social-ecological perspective that builds upon existing models to examine the implications for working with young people enmeshed in complex and persistent offending.

An Individualising, Risk-Based Paradigm

Both the dominant narrative and practice of youth justice are framed by a ‘risk-factor-prevention’ paradigm that tends to conceive young people in terms of their problems, deficits and pathologies (Robinson, 2015). This approach is seen by some as overly managerialist and reductionist, oversimplifying children’s lives to ‘restricted bundles of risks’ (Haines and Case, 2015: 87). From this perspective, over-reliance on risk assessment tools (Asset and AssetPlus in the United Kingdom) can tend to focus attention and resources too narrowly on ‘problem’ areas in children’s lives seen as directly related to their offences (Ward, 2006). The tendency is to respond to a child’s excessive alcohol use, for example, with a ‘substance misuse’ programme rather than working to understand and change underlying causes. Identifying and individualising reoffending risk in this way fails to account for wider economic and political factors that limit access and opportunities and thus significantly impact on young people’s lives, choices and social identities (Barry, 2010; Bottrell, 2007; Bottrell and Armstrong, 2007).

The main criticism of a risk-factor approach is its overriding focus on individualising the causes of – and therefore ‘solutions’ to – offending (Gray, 2013; Haines and Case, 2015). Young people are ‘responsibilised’ for their attitudes, thinking and behaviour notwithstanding the various social, situational and structural forces and conditions shaping and influencing these factors (Gray, 2013; Haines and Case, 2015; Kemshall, 2008). External factors are frequently side-lined by the focus on ‘dynamic risk factors’, or ‘criminogenic needs’, factors which relate to offending and are seen as amenable to change – a focus which ‘is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective … interventions’ (Ward, 2006: 212, original emphasis). Risk-based models tend to focus on psychometric and individualised psychosocial factors which can produce an isolated view of a young person and ignore the wider historical, cultural and social structural context of their development. A social-ecological framework, in contrast, directs attention to the interactions and relationships within which offending arises, persists and is perpetuated.

Using Relationships to Support Positive Development

Two elements are essential here: building effective practitioner/young person relationship (Drake et al., 2014; Sharpe, 2012), and using it to support positive youth development (PYD) (Hill, 1999; Roth and Brooks-Gunn, 2003). While much of the literature around effective working relationships pertains to adults and desistance (Leibrich, 1994; McNeill et al., 2005), or to social work with vulnerable or involuntary clients (Trevithick, 2005; Trotter, 1999), many of the principles equally apply to working with young people. These centre on establishing rapport, building trust, modelling and conveying respect, empathy, acceptance, honesty and genuineness (Leibrich, 1994; McNeill et al., 2005; Mason and Prior, 2008; Trevithick, 2005). Legitimacy, as perceived by the young person, is essential to effective working (Case and Haines, 2014, 2015; McNeill et al., 2005; Seymour, 2013). Demonstrating respect for the young person’s rights and desires, and trust in their ability to change and grow is also crucial. From a strengths-based perspective, this trust can help to develop a young person’s sense of confidence and ‘self-belief in their capacity to change’ (Lewis, 2014: 171). Relationships thus underpin young people’s engagement, compliance and, ultimately, leaving offending behind (Robinson, 2014; Seymour, 2013).

Building effective working relationships requires time: continuity is critical (Ipsos MORI, 2010; McNeill et al., 2005), as is frequency. Wilson (2013) found that ‘young people who had more frequent contacts … were less likely to re-offend’ (p. 37). Effective work with young people requires time for trust to develop gradually (Hill, 1999). Time is essential both to allow children to mature out of offending behaviour and because young people’s experience of and conceptions of time reflect cultural expectations embedded in their social context (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002) and are thereby ‘shaped by interaction with significant others’ (Woodman, 2011: 126). This insight has implications for understanding and working with young people in the context of their social relationships – the ‘proximal processes’ (see below) that shape their behaviour, development and orientation towards others.

Relationship quality is also important. Positive relationships develop positive identities. Lewis’ (2014) findings attest to the ‘mutual caring’ aspect of ‘positive working relationships’ (p.170), which suggests a human connection that transcends a supervisory role. A negative relationship can give rise to anger, bitterness and anxiety which damage worker/client and other significant relationships, thus undermining otherwise protective sources of support in a young person’s life. It may ‘push change away’ (Lewis, 2014: 170) and make offending more likely. A ‘good’ working relationship can ‘open the door to influence’ (Leibrich, 1994: 41) and ‘move change closer’ (Lewis, 2014: 170), effectively engaging young people and allowing workers to foster and support their motivation to change (McNeill et al., 2005; Rowe and Soppitt, 2014).

From a PYD perspective, young people are not ‘problems to be managed’ but ‘resources to be developed’ (Lerner et al., 2005; Roth and Brooks-Gunn, 2003; Roth et al., 1998). Positive, trusting relationships are used to build young people’s capacity and supportive social relationships through interventions emphasising hope, care and, importantly, ‘expectations for adolescents’ success’ (Roth and Brooks-Gunn, 2003: 172). The negative framing of risk and deficit is ‘dispiriting’ and ‘discouraging’, assumes young people’s shortcomings and creates an ethos of suspicion and blame (Lerner, 2004: 3). Strengths-based responses moderate this negativity. The overarching focus is on normal development and normalising relationships throughout adolescence, principles echoed by ‘positive youth justice’ proponents (Case and Haines, 2014, 2015; Haines and Case, 2015).

Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1992, 1994) ecological systems model of human development (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006) assumes human capacity for change arises from the interactions and ‘relationships between the developing person and his or her biology, psychological characteristics, family, community, culture, physical and designed ecology, and historical niche’ (Lerner et al., 2005: 11). Positive outcomes such as the ‘promotion of desired behaviours’ and ‘prevention of undesirable behaviours’ (Lerner et al., 2005: 12) ensue when individuals interact with their social context in a mutually beneficial way, enhancing the wellbeing of both. Where relationships are built over time and engage young people long-term (Roth et al., 1998), a strengths-based approach characterised by the ‘five Cs’ – competence, confidence, character, connection and caring (Lerner et al., 2005; Roth and Brooks-Gunn, 2003) – will bring about positive development. This gives weight to our argument that effective youth justice interventions are characterised by long-term relationships committed to supporting young people’s potential to grow and change. To examine the function, role and impact of the relationships and interactions between YOT workers and young people involved in prolific offending, we have adapted and built on Bronfenbrenner’s social-ecological model.

A Social-Ecological Lens

A social-ecological framework sees young people in terms of their relationships with their immediate environment of family, friends, school and neighbourhood and the wider socio-cultural, political-economic context. Five ‘nested’ systems – microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, macrosystems and chronosystems – comprise a set of interrelated ecologies (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1992, 1994, Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006). Within this systems framework, the factors and processes that shape young people’s actions, interactions and identities can be seen as operating at various levels, simultaneously and across time. Importantly, a young person’s ‘environment’ is depicted not as a single setting but as a constellation of interconnected settings within which human development unfolds and is shaped via increasingly complex interactions (Bronfenbrenner, 1994; France et al., 2012).

Microsystems comprise the individual in relationship with the physical, social and symbolic features of their family, friends, school and neighbourhood settings. The ‘ecology of being in care’ exemplifies a microsystem (France et al., 2012). A mesosystem comprises ‘the linkages and processes taking place between two or more settings containing the developing person’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1994: 40) – the relations between home and school, for instance, or the nature of communication and cooperation between parents and the YOT. Exosystems comprise the connections and interactions between two or more settings outside the young person, yet which have a direct impact upon processes within their immediate setting – for example, the links between a young person’s home life and a parent’s criminal activities or social networks.

The macrosystem incorporates the dominant socio-cultural features and historical events within which the preceding systems are embedded. It comprises ‘the overarching pattern’ of beliefs, values, norms, customs, lifestyles, resources, opportunities and options available in a given geo-cultural setting (Bronfenbrenner, 1994: 40). The recursive interactions between these four systems occur in a temporal and historic context: the chronosystem. Here, time is not only an aspect of the growing person but also of their surrounding environment, manifest in changes in family structures, employment or housing status – even ‘the degree of hecticness and ability in everyday life’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1994: 40).

Bronfenbrenner’s (1995) later theory of ‘Process-Person-Context-Time’ built in ‘proximal processes’ as a key factor in development, featuring two ideas. First, human development ‘takes place through processes of progressively more complex reciprocal interaction’ (Bronfenbrenner, 1995: 620) between a child and the people, objects and symbols in their immediate environment. Children use these interactions to make sense of their world and their place in it. Second, ascertaining the impact of ‘proximal processes’ on development requires a focus on the person (child), the context (spatial and temporal) and the power and context of the process (Bronfenbrenner, 1995: 621).

The notion of nested ecologies locates young people’s problematic offending in the broader context of their ‘relations to crime’ (Bottrell et al., 2010; France et al., 2012). Whereas ‘desistance’ focuses on offending/non-offending, a social-ecological perspective decentres the young person as the source of the offending problem, seeing them in terms of the relationships, interactions and processes that define and influence their everyday lives and experience. This perspective recognises the importance of regular, deep interactions, meaningful to the child – and that new interactions can effectively alter development (or the direction of development) and therefore influence outcomes such as behaviours.

A social-ecological framework offers a useful lens through which to explore and understand young people’s prolific offending and youth justice responses to it. It permits examination of how relationships and social processes function to support or impede young people’s positive identity development which, in turn, shapes their actions and behaviour. To illustrate, we apply this lens to a particular social and geographic setting: a small post-industrial community in Wales. Bronfenbrenner’s lens is here adapted and augmented: to understand the implications for effective ways of working with young people, using a relationship-focused approach to support their positive development.

The Young People

This article draws on a larger study of young people involved in prolific offending in Wales: YJB Cymru identified 303 young people as ‘prolific’ (convicted of 25+ offences) in 2009–2010, of which 117 were profiled (Johns, 2016). This group was overwhelmingly White (only five identified as other than ‘white British’), male (89%) and aged between 15 and 17 years (90% of the boys). Their most common offences were public order, assault, theft and criminal damage, then burglary and drug offences. This article draws on the experience of 11 young men and one young woman – typical of the cohort in age, gender and offending-related issues – and the YOT workers who supervised and supported them through their teenage years, in an area here called ‘Tref Ecoleg’. These 12 cases were selected through convenience sampling: workers’ ties to the local community meant they maintained contact with and were thus able to facilitate access to young people they had worked with. Ethics approval to access young people’s case files was granted on the basis that their data would be de-identified and would remain at the YOT. Young people’s consent to participate in interviews was gained through trusted relationships with their former workers. Interview data supplemented and enriched the case file data already gathered by providing insight into the young men’s social and personal narratives. Data draw on narrative analysis ¹ of case files and interviews with four of the young men (‘Elis’, ‘Dylan’, ‘Gareth’ and ‘Rhydian’) and two workers (YW17, YW18). These 12 young people, now aged 21–24, were involved in offending very much related to their peer group. Although initially low-level and anti-social, it became increasingly ‘serious’:

It was violence, burglaries … a lot of car offences at the time as well but definitely violence, robberies … serious offending. (YW18)

‘Tref Ecoleg’ – The Macrosystem

For illustrative purposes, we focus here on a particular semi-rural, deindustrialised community in Wales, ‘Tref Ecoleg’. Once a thriving centre of heavy industry, this declined from the late 19th century onwards, although its effects still scar the landscape and the psychology of the people. From the mid-1970s, Tref Ecoleg’s flourishing light manufacturing industry also waned. The town is now known for pervasive unemployment, welfare dependence and ill-health associated with poor diet and heavy smoking. Despite high levels of long-term unemployment and economic stagnation, Tref Ecoleg still clings to its credentials as a centre for heavy industry; its values, traditions and beliefs emanate from this cultural memory. These form the pillars of its macrosystem – the structural and (sub)cultural patterns, mores and ethos within which the young people grew up and which shaped their development, filtering down through the microsystems of home, school and peers. Young (1999, 2007) identifies the negative effects and disembeddedness which arise out of such conditions of deficit. Here, we consider how these pertain and whether social-ecological approaches can help resolve them.

For many of the young people growing up in Tref Ecoleg, success must have seemed remote. There was ‘nothing round here … we had nothing to do’ (Gareth), ‘nothing at all’ (Dylan). Limited opportunities characterised their experience:

It’s hard round here … for jobs, and that, it’s low … The crime rates up [and there’re] lots of drugs. (Elis)

Elis describes the background of ‘many boys’ that he grew up with, lacking family support or encouragement, in terms of the intergenerational disadvantage seen to characterise the town:

they’ve only got like their mother or father, [and] they’re either ill, or like … 75% of the population … [they’re] on benefits … half of them just can’t be arsed to get up off their arse.

These macrosystemic factors clearly had an impact on the young people’s lives. One worker even suggested that leaving the area might have helped:

I think it would have given them a good chance. They certainly wouldn’t have stopped it all but I think they would have had a better go of life then. (YW18)

Neither the place nor its people caused the young people’s criminality, however:

I can’t so much blame the area, ‘cos there’s a lot of … good people round here, they work hard for what they got and then they come home and find out they’ve been robbed … you can’t blame it on the people. (Elis)

Rather, their offending behaviour was seen to arise out of the interconnected settings of home, school, peers and community: constellations of negativity that became embedded in their experience and identity.

Constellations of Negativity: Microsystems and Mesosystems

Typifying the broader cohort, most of the young people in this group lacked supportive family relationships. All had negative childhood experiences, ‘chaotic lifestyles’ and ‘no-one they could talk to’ (YW18). Many of the young men had criminality in their family; all except one had ‘no father, no father figure’. Others, such as ‘Rhydian’,

… witnessed harrowing domestic abuse … [had a] horrendous, horrendous childhood. Each and every one of them … other than [Dylan] … had quite bad childhoods. (YW18)

‘Attachment issues’ were prevalent (YW17), such as for the young woman in the group:

[‘B’] had been raised in foster care, very little attachment with any sort of family members or foster carers … she just … didn’t have any motivation to change, it was like what’s the point? Pretty aimless lifestyle, no goals, so very little motivation to change anything. That was quite common. (YW17)

The young men interviewed attested to local schools’ failure to meet their basic educational needs, and perceived that ‘they just weren’t willing to help’ (Dylan):

I would have probably stuck my head down if they would have given me the support and put me on the right track. They don’t want to help, do they? (Gareth)

The result for Elis was, for instance, that prior to his engagement with the YOT,

I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t do nothing, till up to the age of like fifteen, I was illiterate, but then the YOT put me in courses and stuff like that …

The schools ‘giving up on them’ was compounded by parental indifference (a mesosystemic rupture):

With me, because … my mother wasn’t really much bothered, they just used to ring the [YOT] and say ‘come and get him’. They [the school] didn’t try nothing. (Gareth)

Lacking supportive families, the peer group took on a great significance in shaping the young people’s sense of identity and belonging, manifest in their group identity and behaviour:

we were a good bunch of boys, and there were a few of us, … we were blood brothers, we’d touch our cuts together. (Gareth)

For some, ‘who wouldn’t have got into trouble on their own’ (YW17), proximal interactions with their peers directly influenced their offending, in a ‘sort of group peer mentality’ (YW17):

Once we were together that was it, we were the worst, a lot worse than being apart. (Gareth)

We’d still do stupid things on our own but when were together would be the worst definitely. (Dylan)

Elis gives insight into how the influence of peer relationships made it hard for him to stay out of trouble:

It was just the group I hanged about with … they were all good boys – it’s just together we all bounced off one another. It’s really hard to stay out of trouble, like once he’s gonna do something, you’re always, you’ve got his back, you’re with him a hundred percent, d’you know what I mean?

B’s case file, for example, notes that ‘in the company of peers [she] can be extremely violent and intimidating’. In their neighbourhood, Dylan and Gareth explain that a culture of intimidation prevailed:

we found we couldn’t just be a normal kid because we would have been taken advantage of … by the other people around the estates … you had to step [up] … we had to make our stamp. (Gareth)

Not only did they feel they had to ‘make’ their stamp, but they had to ‘keep’ it as well:

You keep your stamp there don’t you as well, no-one was taking it from us. (Dylan)

This meant increasing levels of violence and out-of-control behaviour, in proximal processes of increasing complexity.

An ecology of prolific offending

At that time, in the mid-late 2000s, ‘street valium’ was prevalent in and around Tref Ecoleg (as across the United Kingdom (Drugscope, 2008)) and largely drove the escalation in the young people’s offending (stealing cars, fighting, robberies):

Concerningly … they couldn’t remember what they’d done. Violent behaviour for some was completely out of character and you would take them through exactly what they did and you could tell that they had very, very little recollection of it. (YW17)

Two young men reflected on this group behaviour:

Valium was the main thing for me … I’d take like twenty and thirty, so I’d be out of my skull, I wouldn’t know what was going on, and I’d start doing stuff like burglaries, … pinching cars, robbing motor bikes, you feel a bit invincible on it, you think ‘no-one can touch me’, and then you hurt a few people and you start fighting, you start fights with people for no reason whatsoever. (Elis)

As soon as something winds you up … that’s it then. As soon as that adrenalin kicks in with whatever’s in there it connects like nothing and you are just wild. … We terrorised our streets. (Gareth)

As a result of their behaviour, they were feared and demonised within their community. Their offending cemented their exclusion and marginalisation. In addition, the group’s identity was becoming solidified through their use of valium and their associated behaviours:

Valium was increasing the confidence in who they were and because they were just going out there and fighting. (YW18)

This process of solidification became part of an iterative, recursive cycle of image-production and reproduction:

Because they’ve got this image in the community … they feel as if they’ve got to live up to that image. And I do think that’s the biggest thing for them. … It’s expected of them then. (YW18)

Over time (chronosystem), their behaviour became ‘normal’ – a manifestation of negativity embedded in their micro and mesosystems, constellated around the peer group and reinforced by their external image (exosystem). Negative expectations became a ‘feedback loop’ that had implications within the community:

most people won’t trust boys round here to cut their grass, like if you’re known, you ain’t got a chance, they’re gonna know what you’ve done in the past, so that’s hard … when people judge you on what you’ve done, they’re like … ‘he’s no good to me, I can’t use him’, and that makes a person feel worthless. (Elis)

But they felt excluded in other ways too: Gareth’s family ‘were always happy … to send [him] to the YOT’; Dylan’s ‘just got fed up’. As YW18 observed, ‘they were getting shunned out there, so they had to stick together’. Their exclusion seemed to intensify the ‘pull’ of their peers, through proximal processes invested with meanings intelligible only within the group. Gareth explains how this drove their behaviour:

the blue lights was like an attraction … If he has done something and been arrested I will get arrested with him next time. That’s the reason we’d do it.

Other young people appeared to define themselves in relation to peers via more distal processes, not so much offending together but in competition:

they’d be bragging to each other … and they would tell everyone … they had a little pledge going on between each other because they all wanted to go to custody … there was a competition. (YW18)

We thought it was big and hard … If he’s been nicked I want to get nicked for something better. You’ve got to do something worse … to make it a bit better. (Gareth)

Some actively sought incarceration, deliberately behaving in ways likely to result in custodial sentences:

[Dylan] could have had another opportunity and he didn’t want it and was saying to the magistrates, ‘f**k off, I don’t want it, I’m not going to do this [supervision order] … so put me down’. (YW18)

[‘L’s] offence didn’t even warrant custody … he played hell in the court and demanded that they put him away. … But then his offending just escalated and escalated. (YW18)

It is unsurprising, therefore, that custody held little deterrent:

they loved it! … If they were going to Parc [prison], all their buddies were there so it was like a youth club. (YW18)

From the young people’s perspective, custody was in many ways an extension of life in the community: ‘all my boys are in there … so it makes it easier’ (Elis). From an identity development perspective, these increasingly complex interactions, and increasingly punitive responses, served to entrench their offending identity and the negativity attached to it.

Figure 1 depicts the development and reinforcement of ‘prolific’ young people’s negative identity, without the intervention of the YOT. Single arrows show flows emanating from the constellations of negativity (represented by circles) that comprised the young people’s microsystems and mesosystems. Double arrows show the recursive production and reproduction of young people’s negative identity: expectations of failure (e.g. schools, agencies, community), interactions with the criminal justice system (police, courts, custody) and the offending peer group (valium use, increasing violence, competition to be the ‘hardest’). The background symbolises the macrosystem within which these interactions, processes and negativity were embedded.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Negative identity development. (Photo by wintersixfour, used under Morguefile license).

Turning Things Around – Positive Mesosystems Support Positive Microsystems

We turn now to explore ways in which the YOT engaged the young people and started to build positive micro/mesosystemic experiences, interactions and expectations into their lives. Shunned by their community, lacking family support and perceiving that school and other agencies had failed them, these young people were marginalised and excluded. At the YOT, in contrast, they found space and support:

[I needed] just someone one-on-one with me … I’ve … opened up to people here because they give you the time to listen. … When we … let them in they helped us a lot. (Gareth)

At the YOT, boundaries and expectations were clear. They received encouragement that was clearly lacking at home and at school: ‘if you were doing well they would let you know you were doing well’ (Gareth); and, equally, ‘if you were doing badly they would let you know you were doing badly, they wouldn’t just leave you to get away with it’ (Dylan). Both support and boundaries were thus perceived as legitimate. So, from these boys’ perspective, the YOT was

good at getting you on the right track, and keeping you here, making you feel rewarded, and that’s all you need to do really isn’t it? (Gareth)

The YOT met the boys’ unmet educational needs too:

I learned a lot more things here than I learned in school, they used to come down here on a Sunday. You wouldn’t get many youngsters out on a Sunday going to a youth offending school at 10 o’clock in the morning. I had my own cereal and everything. [So it was like a second home?] Yeah it was, I was lost without it. (Gareth)

These YOT workers were not driven by risk assessments alone, but by a desire to engage the young people and promote their positive development. Elis felt understood, encouraged and supported in that his worker

knew what made me tick, what I was a feeling, she’d know how to handle it.

Young people also felt contained to some degree:

if I didn’t have the YOT … I would’ve done a lot more crime, definitely hundred percent. (Elis)

they wanted to keep track of me ‘cos they were worried about me … I was a bit of a risk – but it was pretty good ‘cos otherwise I would’ve got into more trouble. (Rhydian)

The workers discovered that the young people responded to the tight boundaries imposed by intensive supervision and surveillance (ISS) conditions, which included daily contact:

the biggest factor I think with these was the support … they wanted that … They responded to the support, they loved the support, they loved the boundaries … it’s a lot to do with the intensity of … the support … and how it’s given. (YW18)

Perceived legitimacy engendered compliance: whereas they would not comply with other sanctions – ‘they were constantly breaching their tag’ – in contrast, ‘the support … and all the other elements we put in place, they adhered to’ (YW18):

they’d be begging for more contact … Most of them would go all day if we let them … I think for them it was a reason to say to the boys I can’t, I’ve got YOT, so I can’t come with you. (YW18)

The YOT workers recognised the need to search for ways to build a relationship with the young people, to start to implement the kind of proximal processes that could counteract those within the peer group:

they’re not motivated initially, but it’s working on that but then identifying incentives in their life, no matter how small it is … they come through the door … there’s something there. You grip on that and think there’s something to work with now. It could be something so insignificant but it’s not, there’s something there … because they’ve got to trust you and … build their relationship with you … they become quite close to you. (YW18)

The ISS daily contact thus provided an opportunity for regular, ‘close’ interactions to take place, over an extended period of time. These would become increasingly complex in that only once a trusting relationship had been established could ‘work’ on offending behaviour begin. This ‘work’ was very practical, filling up time that might otherwise be spent offending:

they used to take me kayaking, stuff like that, they used to do practical stuff with me, keep me busy, keep my mind off other things, and I’d always have something planned for the week, as a target for me to look forward to, instead of thinking ‘oh I haven’t got nothing to do, I’ll just go and rob some[one]’ … they used to take me over to the monkey sanctuary, and I loved that, working with animals, it weren’t like work. (Elis)

It was also intensely symbolic: kayaking and working with animals symbolised alternative forms of risk-taking and relationship-building. And doing those activities represented a positive youth justice interaction, likely to increase the young person’s perception of the legitimacy of the YOT’s work with them:

I used to kayak – even when I was on community service order, I never done really bad community service you know like going painting houses, nothing like that. (Elis)

Thus, trust built incrementally over time. The boys described their experience of the YOT support which responded to their human needs, beyond their ‘criminogenic needs’:

Even if it was out of hours and we needed a chat we would have their numbers, we could phone them in the middle of the night and they would chat to us. (Gareth)

I was in and out of care … YOT have had to come and pick me up late in the night after I’ve been chucked out of B&Bs, it was pretty hard. (Rhydian)

Such interactions were in stark contrast to the young people’s experience of being excluded and marginalised by schools and other agencies. These were issues the YOT workers had to navigate, advocating on their behalf:

there were agencies that wouldn’t take them because of their offending … There was … a real bias coming up. I said ‘how do you expect them to get on if you won’t give them a chance?’ … I said ‘look I’ll come up and get them, if they play up, we’ll be up for them’. (YW18)

This advocacy was based on an understanding of the young people and the need to ensure that services (including the YOT) set realistic goals. Expecting young people who have ‘never been in school … [to attend a] training placement five days a week, all day’ (YW18), for instance, is setting them up to fail. Yet many services apparently did expect ‘clients’ to meet their standards of attendance and behaviour, without considering the challenges young people may be facing. This meant young people were frequently excluded from mainstream and alternative education and training providers; or were accepted, failed and then rejected. ‘F’, for example, who had exhausted all the other services, was accepted on a training course with a local agency:

when they gave me the referral, I said he can’t go, there’s no way. He’s just come out of a binge … he’s just going to lose this in a week … I said I’ll work with him until we see some progress and … put him back in gradual. … Let’s work with him on a daily basis … until we can get him to a stage where we know that he’s ready to go back … He has demonstrated that he can … (YW18)

YW18 shows deep understanding of F’s needs and capacity, and commitment to supporting his engagement (realistically) to bring about positive outcomes. This requires accepting young people’s realities, and persisting with them:

[taking] small steps with them and accepting … who they are. … It’s just constantly starting again with them. (YW18)

Not only did workers understand the young people’s complex issues but consistently promoted their positive development, construing ‘success’ where failure might otherwise be perceived, such as staying in a training placement for ‘two weeks’:

To me that was positive … it is progress made … for a kid that’s never gone through formal education, I think that’s a massive achievement … they’re showing they have the ability to do it, aren’t they? So … yes, loads of contracts get terminated, [but] each one you push … they might go a bit longer. (YW18)

This showed ‘we weren’t giving up on them’ (YW18). Some young people had to test this, however, such as one who

actually threatened me, abusive, so I took the matter to court. He came to me the next day and cried his eyes out, he was so sorry for what he did. … I said to him, ‘I’m not going to walk away from you, you’ve done this but I still want to work with you’. The relationship just grew then. I think he was expecting me to say I’m not going to work with you anymore. But I mean it’s what you do, you can’t expect them to be nice and want to go to you all the time. (YW18)

Her affirmative, reassuring tone contrasted starkly to the negativity attached to these young people in so many other contexts. Modelling respect and commitment in this way allowed young people to begin to feel like they were taking control of their lives, as did ‘involving them in everything’:

if you’re going to breach … you sit them down, you tell them. They understand that. Or … say stuff had gone on and I had to make a referral to social services, I don’t go ahead and do it, I’ll go up and visit them and say this is what I’ve got to do, this is why. They’ve got to be involved in it. … They’ve got to be a big part of their order – it’s their order. It’s just helping them to adhere to what’s expected of them. (YW18)

Long-term relationships between young people and their workers carry risk. Data from the larger study suggested some young people depended on the YOT because it provided support, consistency and/or boundaries missing at home. To build young people’s independence, therefore, YOT workers strove to (re)build relationships within their community and, wherever possible, to work with families – getting ‘the parents on board … that’s the key’ (YW18). This relational work also recognised the importance of peer relationships which can be both negative and positive, identifying something/someone that can be ‘an incentive to change’:

Sometimes it was a girl … which can go one of two ways. She can either be very pro-social and support, or she wouldn’t be and … that would be worse. (YW17)

Building young people’s positive identities requires understanding of these microsystemic processes and dynamics, to be able to challenge and encourage them in positive ways. It involves identifying and nurturing a young person’s desire to change their lives and structuring work around that desire. As well as talking ‘about your mistakes and what you’ve got to change’ (Gareth), YOT workers strove to build hope and confidence, encouraging the young people at every opportunity, recognising their smallest ‘success’:

For a kid that was constantly in and out … if they’re kept out of custody for five months, to me that was a success … I used to go ‘oh my God, [‘F’] it is four months now, come on now, we can do this now’. (YW18)

Some young people only realised after several terms of imprisonment that they wanted something different from their lives: they think ‘hang on, do I want this the rest of my life?’ (YW18). For others, the impetus for change comes in a sudden realisation:

One day, I’ll never forget it … [‘C’] said if I don’t stop taking Valium, he said, I’m going to wake up in a police cell and I will have committed a murder and have no knowledge of what I’ve done. (YW18)

For many, it is gradual, progressively longer gaps in offending, the result of slow-growing trust:

I used to bottle things up, I wouldn’t let no-one in. It took a lot for them to get through to me, but when they did it worked. (Gareth)

YOT workers must be ready for whenever/however a young person’s readiness to change arises, to have prepared the foundation upon which that change can be built.

Figure 2 (below) shows how effective interventions with young people and stable trusting relationships with consistent adults can build positive mesosystemic opportunities and interactions and thereby shape the microsystems around the young person. By YOT workers building trusting relationships with young people, negotiating access to opportunities and resources, and recognising their successes rather than failures, young people’s positive identity can develop and grow. Elis, Dylan and Gareth have been out of trouble for a couple of years now. Although they attribute their success to the YOT’s support, ‘settling down’ in relationships has been their biggest motivator, as well as – for Dylan and Gareth – their children, fatherhood. Although Rhydian has slipped up recently, he has also been ‘doing so well’ (YW18). The key driver for them all now is respect, as Elis sums up:

I want people to say like, ‘he’s a nice boy’ … I want to have a social standing.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Positive identity development. (Photo by wintersixfour, used under Morguefile license).

Conclusion

Prolific and persistent offending is associated with difficult backgrounds and complex needs, as our ‘Tref Ecoleg’ cases illustrate. The recursive processes through which negativity becomes embedded in young people’s lives can manifest in (often extremely) challenging behaviours. We have used a social-ecological lens to explain how effective youth justice work can help young people develop positive identities, engage in positive interactions and manifest positive behaviours. A social-ecological approach to positive identity development recognises the importance of regular, deep, meaningful interactions (‘proximal processes’), and that new interactions can influence young people’s development and thus shape their outcomes. It recognises the constellation of interconnected settings within which behaviours manifest: that school failure and social exclusion may be remedied, from a child’s perspective, by a sense of belonging and the approval of a peer group, even when it escalates into serious offending. The implications for working with young people – to interrupt their offending and develop positive identities – are to replace those (anti-social) proximal processes with positive (pro-social) activities for the young person to engage in, on a regular basis, over an extended period, and with increasing complexity (Bronfenbrenner, 1999). Symbolically, positive youth justice interactions are more likely to be perceived as legitimate, which (evidence suggests) is essential for effective work with young people.

The bedrock of this effective work is a trusting relationship, built over time: taking time to understand the interplay of a young person’s micro, meso and exosystems; discovering ‘what makes them tick’, what is important to them; building trust slowly so they are willing to engage. Only then can effective work with young people ensue through support, advocacy and brokering positive interactions: opening up access to opportunities, helping to (re)build social relationships, supporting positive connections with agencies and community resources, generating alternative (pro-social) activities to fill time otherwise spent offending, fostering young people’s interests and strengths. Developing a young person’s positive identity in this way does not ignore their offending but sees the ‘whole’ person, not just the ‘offender’. Time is needed to counteract the negativity that has built up over the lives of young people, such as Gareth – now crime-free, a father of two in a long-term relationship – who reflects,

there was a lot of changing to do, and if you change, there are still people around you, and the things that people think of you … it takes a long time to change.

By adapting Bronfenbrenner’s social-ecological lens specifically to a youth justice context, we reveal implications for effective youth justice practice – that systemic interactions can embed negativity in young people’s lives but that, importantly, effective work can facilitate, create and contribute to positive interactions. This goes beyond ‘desistance-focused’ work.

A social-ecological youth justice sees young people as social beings, in their social context, building relationships based on their strengths, desires and capacity for change, recognising the constraints and possibilities of time. When court orders limit the time available to engage young people, every interaction must build towards an enduring positive identity. An identity they can use to support others: Elis, Dylan, Gareth and Rhydian, for instance, all spoke of their attempt to engage with other young people to try and help them avoid their experience. An identity they can pass on to future generations: as Rhydian insists, ‘what I didn’t have, I’m going to make sure my kids have had’. In contrast to other positive ways of working with young people, it is not controlling or paternalistic, but facilitating and enabling. It increases the agency of the young person; he or she is the driver. Workers intervene via proximal processes to support the child in replacing negative context and processes with positive. This helps to build autonomy, self-awareness, strong and sustainable belongingness. Supporting the positive development of a young person’s identity gives a future, gives them something to give.