Schooling and Crime: Exploring the Links

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Schooling and CrimeExploring the Links

• Troubles of Youth
• Sunday, 02 August 2015

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Lecture Outline

• Theories of Education
• Disengagement and Policy Responses
• Attainment
• Disruption
• Exclusions
• Links to Criminality
• School as Site of Crime/ Crime Prevention in
  Schools
• Safer Schools Partnerships
• Crime Reduction in Secondary Schools
• Education and Desistance
• Interventions
• Mentoring
• Avoiding Exclusion

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Interpretations of Education

• Education is traditionally cited in positive,
  functional terms
• Schooling provides skills, morality, social
  regulation, social ranking
• More critical commentaries
• Education acts to maintain and reproduce social
  inequalities
• Working class children, Black and female pupils
  have roles and expectations matched to
  realistically low achievements
• For middle class children, education operates to
  reproduce culturally dominant modes of behaviour
  and achievement
• Education perpetuates the myth of meritocracy

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How important is schooling?

• Little independent effect of schooling?
• Schools simply reflect the macro-, or meso- level
  effects of wider social order
• Schools dont affect individual success /
  failure, but represent an arena this is played
  out
• Bernstein (1970) Schools cannot compensate for
  society
• Considerable effect?
• Schools provide the critical mix for crime
  opportunity
• at-risk of victimisation members of society
• high value, sellable property
• motivated offenders
• (possibly) low-levels of effective supervision
• Vital role in the labelling of young people
• Coleman / Jencks (1972)
• more of an independent effect noted, esp. for low
  ability pupils from lower social class, or ethnic
  minorities

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Disaffection and Trouble in Schools

• Tension between individual needs and that of the
  group is apparent throughout the education system
• Sources of trouble for children in school
• failure to do their work
• behaviour towards others
• Attendance
• Non-condoned absence
• Condoned absence

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Source Hayden, C et al (2007) Schools, pupil
behaviour and young offenders BRIT. J. CRIMINOL.
Vol 47 pp 293310
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Steer Report (2005)The Practitioners Group on
School Behaviour and Discipline

• It is often the case that for pupils, school is
  a calm place in a disorderly world. We realise
  that this is not the case in every school, but in
  our experience, where unsatisfactory behaviour
  does occur, in the vast majority of cases it
  involves low-level disruption in lessons.
  Incidents of serious misbehaviour, and especially
  acts of extreme violence, remain exceptionally
  rare and are carried out by a very small
  proportion of pupils
• some new forms problematic behaviour around new
  technology
• in loco parentis? a trend for parents to
  challenge schools at law. has continued and
  intensified

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Links between Schooling and Delinquency

• Strong correlational links between schools
  demographic characteristics and delinquency
• Farrington and West (1973) suggest this is not a
  school effect, but reflects differences in
  intake
• Rutter (1979) 15000 Hours sig. school
  effects in attainment, attendance and behaviour
  in school delinquency relatively unaffected by
  school
• Differences may explain research approach adopted

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Delinquent / Delinquescent Sub-culture

• Mediating factor of group effects
• Numerous studies (Hargreaves (1967) Chambliss
  (1973) Willis (1977) Schwedingers (1985)) have
  identified oppositional sub-cultures that relate
  educational disengagement with delinquency
• Over-deterministic?
• Some evidence that delinquent sub-cultures are
  affected by streaming, and by school processes
  of marginalization

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Disruptive Behaviour -gt Delinquency?

• Objective measurement of disruptive behaviour?
• Criminalisation?
• School problems acting as a net-widener
• Suspended / disruptive pupils deemed more
  problematic if they enter the CJS
• School reports carry weight with magistrates

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Truancy
Level of Truancy Year 10 and 11(age) Level of Truancy Year 10 and 11(age)
Every Day 1.5
2-4 times a week 3.2
Once a week 3.5
2-3 times a month 5.4
Once a month 4.7
Less Often 12.2
Never 69.5

• Not a straightforward proxy for disaffection
• Often carried out to avoid certain lessons, not a
  particular dislike for school
• Poor neighbourhood and low-skilled family
  increases risk (Galloway 1985)
• Absenteeism records a strong predictor of
  exclusion

OKeefe (1994) using YCS data
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Truancy and Criminality

• Causal links difficult to establish
• Some find evidence of truancy coinciding with
  offending at that stage in life
• Little evidence of offending whilst actually
  truanting
• Once apprehended, truancy appears to be a
  significant factor in decisions made by police
  and the courts

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Crime Reduction in Secondary Schools

• Key Factors in Enhancing Life Chances and
  preventing offending
• Good quality staff / pupil relationships
• Importance of recognising parental / carers
  roles
• Commitment to implementation across the whole
  school
• Integration of measures into wider practices

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Exclusions and Offending
Evidence of a close link between exclusions and
juvenile custodial population?
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The independent effects of permanent exclusion
from school on the offending careers of young
peopleDavid Berridge et al (2001)

• Aim to establish whether permanent exclusion
  from school had an independent effect on
  offending career
• Research Problems
• official data retrospective informal
  practices theoretical problem

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Findings
No recorded offences at all 85 (32.3)
Only recorded offences after exclusion 117 (44.4)
Offences before and after exclusion 47 (17.9)
Only offences before exclusion 14 (5.3)
Total number of excluded pupils 263 cases
A solution - Older boys
Offending after exclusion Offending after exclusion
Total 168
Offending intensified at time of exclusion 13
a complex chain of events loosening affiliation and commitment to a conventional way of life loss of time structures a re-casting of identity a changed relationship with parents and siblings the erosion of contact with pro-social peers and adults closer association with similarly situated young people and heightened vulnerability to police surveillance. a complex chain of events loosening affiliation and commitment to a conventional way of life loss of time structures a re-casting of identity a changed relationship with parents and siblings the erosion of contact with pro-social peers and adults closer association with similarly situated young people and heightened vulnerability to police surveillance.
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Findings (2)

• Substantial majority of excluded pupils were
  involved in crime
• Substantial majority of young people involved in
  crime had been excluded from school
• Other non-school risk (personality and
  socio-demographic) risk-factors also present
• Transition to secondary school problematic for
  many
• Black African-Caribbean students greater teacher
  apprehension
• Permanent exclusions usually the end of a lengthy
  process of warnings and fixed-term exclusions
  little planning for post-exclusion care, though

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What Works? Educational Interventions

• Education
• metrics-rich enabling a strong evidence oriented
  culture however,
• Treatment much more difficult to measure than
  outcomes
• Need to consider varying inputs social
  background etc.
• Claims to effects beyond education probably the
  result of complex intermediary stages

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Educational Interventions examples

• Increased Parental Involvement in Education
• (Spontaneous) large effects on educational
  achievement
• (Planned) little evidence
• Pre-school education
• Promising, incl. extra-educational metrics
• School Improvement Teams

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Addressing Disaffection

• Learning Support Units / Pupil Referral Units
• Net-widening / variation in practice / formation
  of delinquent peer groups
• Mentoring e.g. Mentoring-Plus
• Central role of the relationship between mentor
  and young person
• Positive impact most marked in relation to
  education / work no evidence of effect on
  offending, family relationships, substance use
  and self-esteem

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Responses to Disruptive Behaviour

• Level 1 Whole school strategies
• Policies and strategies
• Behaviour bullying Equal Opps SEN provision,
  teaching and learning strategies
• Agreements
• Home-school agreements
• Individual pupils
• Educational targets behavioural expectations
  Individual Behaviour Plans, Pastoral Support
  Plans Personal Education Plans
• The curriculum
• PSHE citizenship education teaching and
  learning strategies
• Levels 2 In-school and more intensive support
  (patchy provision)
• Withdrawal rooms or Leaning Support Units group
  and individual work learning mentors
• Level 3 Combination and reintegration programmes
  and plans (patchy provision)
• Part-time at school part-time at an FE college,
  sometimes with a view to reintegration Include
  programmes
• Level 4 Out of School provision
• Pupil Referral Units, home tuition, residential
  placements
• Source Hayden, C. (2005) Children in Trouble,
  Palgrave

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Education and Delinquency

• Safer Schools Partnerships
• Evidence of some improvement in attainment and
  attendance
• Institutional reluctance to adopt
• Custodial Education
• Effectiveness difficult to establish
• Self-selection bias cross programme
  contamination lack of effective follow-ups
• Remains overwhelming evidence of the poor
  educational experiences of those in youth
  custody, and of the inadequacy of educational
  provision once in custody