Meeting National Standards for Scotlands Youth Justice Services

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• Meeting National Standards for Scotlands Youth
  Justice Services
• Bill Whyte

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Practice Objectives
• Provide effective measures forcare, protection
  .. or control
• Enable children and families to recognise and
  tackle successfully their difficulties and
  problems
• Reduce offending behaviour
• Help ensure school attendance
• Provide programmes of supervision ..to integrate
  the chid in the community
• Maintain confidence of panel members and the
  public in...effectiveness
• C(S)Act 1995 Ch 2 par4

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Youth Crime Review
• prevention
• early intervention
• diversion from criminal processes
• multi-disciplinary co-ordinated
• participation
• Scottish Executive 2000
• National youth crime and antisocial behaviour
  strategies
• LA multi-agency strategic group and youth crime
  co-ordinators
• National Standards for Scotlands Youth Justice
  Services
• National Guidance on ASB children and young
  people
• Standardised Assessment Tools -ASSET or YLS/CMI
  for persistent offending
• Crime Prevention
• Restorative Justice Provision across Scotland
• Specialist workers
• Fast track Children Hearings and Pilot youth
  court

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Shared and Corporate Responsibility
• Social Work, Education, Leisure, Housing, Drugs,
  Mental Health, Employment, Careers.
• Children (Scotland) Act 1995
• Anti-Social Behaviour (Scotland) Act 2004
• Voluntary assistance
• Written agreements (ABA, ABC) identifying
• - behaviour agreed to stop support they
  can expect consequences
• Anti-social Behaviour Orders ASBOs
• Parenting Orders
• Supervision Requirements
• ISSMs - Electronic monitoring
• Street Wardens
• Powers of dispersal
• Financial penalties for noise and environment
  issues

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• UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
• Beijing Rules, 1985
• well being of the young person
• emotional, mental and intellectual maturity
• socio-educational responses
• extra judicial approaches
• avoidance of deprivation of liberty
• right to representation
• Riyadh Guidelines, 1990 -
• early intervention - shared responsibility
  -multi disciplinary responses
• Havana Rules, 1990
• role of prosecutors and diversion
• ECHR Art 8
  - right to avoid state
  involvement

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• Its a Criminal Waste Stop Youth Crime Now 2000
• Audit Scotland report 2002- more than 80 million
  each year
• Scotlands Action Programme to Reduce Youth Crime
  2002
• Supporting Safer Stronger Communities Scotlands
  Criminal Justice Plan 2004
• Youth Justice Improvement Group 2006

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Scotlands Action Programme
• Increasing public confidence in Scottish Youth
  Justice
• Giving victims a greater stake in Scottish Youth
  Justice
• Easing the transition between the youth justice
  and adult criminal justice system
• Providing young people with opportunity to fulfil
  their potential
• Early intervention

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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Where do responses to ASB and youth crime fit
within integrated children services? Universal,
targeted, specialist What does research, policy
and prctice tell us about who is likely to be
involved in ASB and crime?
www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• National Standards March 2006
• Objective 1
• Improving the quality of the youth justice
  process
• initial and comprehensive assessment for
  offending behaviour
• an action plan, stating the options for the
  programme/interventions to be followed who will
  deliver them the case management arrangements
  and the intensity of contact and supervision
  required.
• reviewed within two months
• must be completed using ASSET/YLS-CMI assessment
  tools.

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• National Standards March 2006
• Objective 2
• To improve the range and availability of
  programmes to stop youth offending
• Intensive community based support and supervision
• Restorative justice approaches
• Family/parent support
• Cognitive skills
• Anger management
• Alcohol, drugs, and mental health programmes
• Diversionary projects

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• National Standards March 2006
• Objective 3
• To reduce the time taken to reach and implement
  hearing decisions
• Time intervals

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• National Standards March 2006
• Objective 4
• To improve information on youth justice services
  to victims and local communities
• Every victim should receive information about the
  process for dealing with the young person who has
  committed an offence against them and the
  outcome.
• Every victim of a young offender referred to the
  reporter on offence grounds will have the
  opportunity to engage in a mediation or
  reparation scheme, where appropriate.

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• National Standards March 2006
• Objective 5
• To target the use of secure accommodation
  appropriately and ensure it is effective in
  reducing offending behaviour
• Reduce number of young people re-referred to
  secure
• Decisions meet the legislative requirements
• Effectiveness
• Service standards planned intervention,
  aftercare

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• National Standards March 2006
• Objective 6
• To improve the strategic direction and
  co-ordination of youth justice services by local
  youth justice strategy teams
• annual report on areas youth justice services
• update annually an audit of youth
• allocate and pool resources
• financial monitoring
• area communications strategy

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• Persistent Offending
• Scottish Definition
• Five episodes in a six-month period
• 1,201 young people identified in 2005
• 10 reduction by April 2006
• Further 10 by 2008.

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Youth Justice Improvement Group
• Identify the success criteria and performance
  indicators for youth justice for 2006-2008
• Consolidate and build on the improvements
  achieved
• Child-centred, integrated responses to children
  who offend or are at risk of offending
• Address concerns, risk factors and offending
  behaviour timeously. appropriately and
  proportionately
• Right support, programmes, monitoring and
  information exchange in the childrens and the
  adult systems
• Transitions between CHS and adult system
• Prevent young people offending
• Effective approaches and interventions based on a
  robust audit of need,
• Staff have the tools - assessment, technology,
  programmes and approaches.
• High risk offenders needs and risks - assessment
  and high intensity interventions
• Appropriate skills and knowledge to make positive
  changes
• Improve information to victims and communities

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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Getting it
Right for Every Child The Whole Child Physical,
social, educational, emotional, spiritual and
psychological development                       
                                                 
www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Key Issues
• Responsibility
• Individual
• Shared
• Corporate
• Multi-disciplinary Targets, Capacity and
  Standards
• Need and Risk

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• Life course and persistent
• Hyperactivity and high daring
• Family difficulties at a young age
• Cognitive difficulties
• Adolescent limited
• Anti-social peers
• Criminality in the family
• Poor educational attachment and achievement
  alcohol and drugs
• Moffitt 1993, Rutter et al 1998

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• Risk Factors
• Criminal anti-social at an early age
  PLUS
• Multiple difficulties
• disruptive and disrupted families
• social educational difficulties
• alcohol drug problems
• ASB, pre-criminal behaviour
• bullying , aggression, or other violent activity
  with anti social activity
• the risk of becoming a persistent offender in
  later teens is two to three times higher for
  those first offending under the aged under 12
  than for a young person whose onset of offending
  is later
• (McGarrell, 2001)

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• Risk Factors
• poor parental supervision,
• harsh and inconsistent discipline,
• parental conflict, and parental rejection
• disrupted and broken homes,
• early separations, both permanent and temporary,
• criminality in the family
• Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber (1986) Farrington,
  (1996).

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• Characteristics of Persistent Offending
• Jointly Reported
  Scotland
• Lone parent 49 20
• LA Tenancy 89 27
• Owner occupier 5 61
• State benefit 64 25
• Accommodated 46 1
• Drug/alcohol 18 -
• Mental health 20 1-2

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• Neighbourhood Stress
• Social housing and amenities
• Household size and constitution
• Family disruption
• Population changes
• Working habits
• Quality time
• Child and family poverty
• Drug, alcohol and mental health issues

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Multiple Difficulties
• Multiple methods
• Multidisciplinary
• Joined up
• Integrated
• If you are it will it be enough?

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• Key Pick up Points
• School, Community, Home
• Age 5 lack of concentration, poor school
  performance, unpopular, not mixing well.
• Age 8 seen as troublesome at school, bullying
  or being bullied, aggressive or withdrawn, victim
  of crime or abuse
• Age 12 - difficulties in transition to secondary
  schools, part of delinquent group, truanting,
  drugs/alcohol

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• Drugs emerged as the predictor of serious or
  persistent
• offending amongst 12-17 year old boys in a
  survey in England and Wales
• The odds of offending were nearly five times
  higher for boys who had used drugs in the last
  year compared with those who had not
  Flood-Page et al 2000
  
• young people who are heavy or binge drinkers
  are more likely to be involved in violent
  offences Honess et al 2000
• a strong link between young peoples use of drugs
  and offending and this increased with age
  Jamieson et al 1999

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• Effective Responses
• diverting young people from formal systems
  altogether
• target resources to those who continue to present
  the greatest risk
• set practices for ASB and youth crime within a
  wider social inclusion framework

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Ineffective responses
• Netwidening
• - drawn unnecessarily into formal process
  to their detriment.
• Scarce resources used inappropriately
• -used unnecessarily to detriment of those
  most risky.

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• ABCs and ASBOs
• risk transferring child care responsibilities to
  police and housing
• filling unmet needs with ASB focused services
• multi-disciplinary response ensure not simply
  enforcement
• referral to other agencies key to integrated
  response

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Understanding Crime
• the background of the asb/crime
• the form
• the social and moral context
• the situation
• Structured interventions and linking to range of
  services according to need and risks

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Referrals by Day and Time of Offence for YP under
15
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• returning home after 10 pm
• parents only sometimes or never knowing where a
  young person is or with whom
• those spending little or no quality time with
  parents
• those spending a lot or quite a lot of time
  hanging around away from home
• those truanting sometimes or often.

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• Promoting Social Welfare
• linking youth justice strategies more closely
  with other strategies supporting young people
• developing the role of youth work
• making stronger connections between youth justice
  and education
• reviewing access to mental health services
• enhancing the role of sport, the arts and
  cultural opportunities in building young peoples
  self-esteem

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Levels of causes for concern about young
people. Information sharing and pick up points?
Low level concern
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• Some things do work sometimes!
• action-oriented methods
• social learning methods
• cognitive-behavioural
• life skills
• family work
• Reid and Fortune, 1998

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• Principles of Effective Intervention

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Risk-need Offence-focus Responsivity Multi-modal C
ommunity based Programme Integrity
Assessment Planning Evaluation
Listening Communication Relationship Recording
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• Effective Communities
• How to involved the community?
• What is local practice to be?
• Will there be a shared understanding of the
  policy objectives?
• Will practices be based on evaluated evidence on
  the nature of youth crime and anti-social
  behaviour and on what is likely to be effective
  in dealing with it?
• How will responses be integrated with mainstream
  provision

www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Effective Practitioners
• warm and optimistic
• enthusiastic, creative and imaginative
• use personal influence through quality
  interaction
• modelling, positive reinforcement
• effective disapproval
• structured learning
• problem solving skills (Trotter 1999)

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• Social Learning and Social Education
• Human Agency the active participation of
  individuals in structuring their own lives.
• Capital - productive investment
• Human capital personal change
• Social Capital changes in social relations
• Cultural Capital change social opportunities

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• Getting SMARTER an holistic approach
• Set Objective screening criteria to identify
  highest risk
• Work intensively when appropriate
• Coordinate services among agencies youth
  services, education, mental health and child
  welfare, youth justice, social inclusion
  services, culture and leisure
• Implement graduated interventions
• Recruit local volunteers and engage community
  based organisations to work with high risk/high
  need
• Make quality follow-up a core component
• Implement effective school-based prevention
  models.
• Mobilise the entire community to plan and
  implement comprehensive youth crime prevention
  strategies that involve families, schools, and
  neighbourhoods.
• Set SMARTER objectives - Specific. Measurable.
  Achievable Relevant. Time-limited, Evaluated and
  Recorded
• (adapted
  from Mendel 2000)

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