RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

YOUNG DELINQUENTS AND YOUTH AT RISK:DATA AND REFLECTIONS ABOUT A COMPLEX PROBLEM
WITH REGARD TO COMMUNITY LEVEL CRIME PREVENTION EFFORTS
By Prof. Dr. Hans-Juergen Kerner*
I. IS JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND CRIMINALITY ON THE INCREASE TODAY?
In many States, also in Europe, the public is quite concerned, in some countries even highly concerned
about the trend and a perceived new “quality” of child delinquency, juvenile delinquency and criminality. The
commonly held belief is that “things get worse and worse” in these times. Partially influenced by media
hype in actually happening cases of heinous crimes committed by sometimes quite very young people, thepublic in general, but also many practitioners and politicians, get the firm impression that in particular youth
violence is getting out of control. Is that perceptual “picture of the evil” being founded in objective data?
There is no clear-cut answer to that question. All too often the available official crime statistics areincomplete. Or the categories are not very useful for detailed and scholarly sound analyses. Or the counting
rules allow for a lot of discretion that may prevent the authorities from putting the optimal type of
information on the forms used later on for creating the relevant crime statistics.
But even if we take all those and other problems into consideration: It seems as if there was actually atrue and substantial rise in juvenile delinquency, especially youth crime, during the last decades in many
countries of the world.
In Western Europe the period between the late 80’s and the 90’s of the last century was seemingly theperiod with the most dramatic development since some 40 years.
It seems as if this development was, in a manner still waiting to be fully understood or reasonably
explained, “influenced” by the so to speak “big ground wave” of sudden social, economic and politicalchanges preceding and accompanying the downfall of communist regimes/states in Eastern Europe. The
fundamental processes of social change led in a couple of respects even to social turmoil. As young persons
are very perceptive of all sorts of “news” and irritating/mind-provoking events it seems plausible toconclude thereof that they have also disproportionally been influenced by the generalized turnover of manystate and societal circumstances. Delinquency and crime can, from this perspective, be seen as kind ofoutward directed “solutions” of tensions deeply felt even if not explicitly recognized as such.
This approach to the phenomenon of rising youth crime rates in the last decade or so would be well inaccordance with the Anomie-Theory of Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist and criminologist, who lived in
France in the late 19th century, and who is considered as one of the founding fathers of criminology as ascience. This classical anomie-theory says: Whenever big changes in basic structures of societies are about
to happen or do actually happen, people become concerned in a very deep-rooted substantial manner. Theydevelop feelings of being endangered. They feel their values becoming de-valuated. They become uncertainof whether or not societal norms will remain firm and valid. In the extreme a generalized state of vaguely
defined, but emotionally nevertheless strongly felt “normlessness”, will spread out. Older persons tend to
become more careful and cautious, younger persons tend, in the opposite, to become more agitated, unruly,
restless, and daring.
This approach would help to understand, perhaps even really to explain, why the most dramatic “spikes”
in the youth crime field occurred in East Germany and the States of Central and Middle-East Europe. Thisapproach would predict eventually, what is actually happening now, at least in the majority of West-European
countries: The rise of juvenile delinquency and of youth crime came to a halt. In some countries it remains
on a high plateau without further increase. In some other countries it shows a decrease. In empirical terms,
however, no one can sufficiently predict whether the new facts indicate a stable trend towards less youth
crime or whether this is nothing but a temporary “pause” in the ever rising amount of youth problems in* Professor of Tubingen University, President Institute of Criminology, University of Tuebingen, Germany.

52

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

modern societies. Every region in the World deserves so far to be analyzed in its own right, that is with acareful evaluation of the whole population size and age distribution, the level and type of distribution of
wealth and income, the prevailing family structure, the school system, the labour market, the force and also
integrity of the authorities, and so on. This cannot be dealt with here.
Irrespective of middle range changes in youth crime there are also some long-term trends. And one canreasonably say that these trends indicate a mix of structurally high offence proneness among young people
on the one hand, and of increases in actual offending rates in difficult times or under difficult socio-economic
conditions in state and society.
Let us look at some data from Germany. In order to show the long-term trend of youth crime in thiscountry I set the starting point with the year 1984. In that year the system of creating the crime statistics
was being fundamentally overhauled. The most important issue, in my opinion, was the possibility for thepolice to individualize from then on an offender as one and the same person if someone was arrested acouple of times during the same year and dealt with by different agencies. So the figures presented on e.g.
age and gender groups relate to true “persons”. The last year taken into consideration here is the year 2001.
As one can see in Figure 1, the young generation came to the attention of the police to a much higher
degree than the full adult generation. And the increase in offenders among the population was higher among
the young than among the older. There is a stark difference in the level between the male and female
populations, but no substantial difference in the basic trend except the circumstance that the female
populations’ trend curve is comparatively steeper in the young age groups.

Figure 1:
The Rise of Criminality in Germany in the Last Decades:
Comparing Different Age Groups and Male and Female Offenders(Source: Police Crime Statistics)
Age Groups

Level of Crime
Rate in 2001
FemaleOffendersLevel of Crime
Rate in 2001
Male
Offenders

Percentage
of Increase
Among
Females
1984-2001

Percentage
of Increase
Among
Males
1984-2001

Juveniles
< 18

3,813

10,066+ 119 %

+83 %Adolescents
< 21

2,858

11,293+ 82 %

+68

2,169

8,372

+ 50 %+ 51 %

820

2,734

+7%

+8%

Young
Adults< 25
MatureAdults
25 +53

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

The crime statistics show in addition that violent crimes did share that general trend. Some crimes likerobbery, but not sexual assault, demonstrated even a still more pronounced increase among the young
generation. There are some pieces of research, however, that allow for the assumption or, in scholarly
perspective, the hypothesis that at least part of that particular development is not based on hard facts of“youthful criminal behaviour” but rather on the consequences of heightened public concern about youth
crime. To put the problem in more mundane terms: We have reason to believe that the understandable
irritation of many people about the worsening crime situation led them to a change in their reporting crimes
to the police. They may have informed the police particularly more often if and when they fell victim of or
were informed about violent crimes as committed by young people.
One indicator is the fact that German youth courts (and adult criminal courts alike) acted comparatively
reluctantly in these years. As criminal court statistics show, the rates of convicting people did increase but
much less than the rates of suspects and/or arrestees. And the “gap” between the two trends became
greater among young defendants than among older defendants. No sensible person would easily tend toassume that the youth courts and the criminal courts in a country discard real trends of more intense andmore excessive crime, and even condone heavy youth crime.
Figure 2 can be used as additional evidence. Researchers in the Northern German city of Hannover, andin the Southern German city of Munich co-operated with the city police forces in the analysis of the internal
files that contain detailed information about the concrete quality of criminal acts, about the suspected
offender(s) and, less often, about the victim(s). Here only the information about the offences as such shall bepresented. The concrete harm caused by those violent crimes committed by young people in both cities wasquite obviously not much different.
For many purposes in theory, anti-crime policy, crime control practice, and crime prevention efforts it isviable to know as much as possible about the hidden crime events. The total of those events is usually called“dark field” or “dark number”. When one is trying to elucidate this dark field by modernsocial/criminological social science research methods one uses so-called self-report studies, either in theversion of offender surveys or of victim surveys. The bulk of those studies are being performed in the
United States of America. Also England and the Netherlands are comparatively good in repeated national
surveys of that type. I shall for the sake of consistency, however, stay with German studies. They are
irregularly administered, and pertain mostly to certain regions or cities or towns.
The substance of the results is, however, quite similar to the big studies in the other countries:
Delinquency and crime are “normal” among young people as general phenomenon. That means more thanhalf of the young population commit the one or the other offence during their life development until theyreach adulthood. If one looks at minor offences like department store theft or fare dodging at public transport(trains, buses, subways, etc.) the rates of “culprits” may even approach the 100 per cent line. Severe crimes,
however, are rather rare events, also in the dark field. Only a minority of youngsters commit them, and ifthey do so, they normally do not tend to become repeaters or career offenders. So: Heavy crime is still
statistically not normal among the upcoming generation.
Males are more active than are females, also in the dark field. The difference is the more pronounced themore we look at heavy offences. With growing age, the young persons turn from more simple offence types
to more sophisticated ones. With growing age, youngsters turn to illegal goods and services that represent
the “needs” of their law-abiding counterparts. To give just one easily understandable example: Also in thedark field children prefer bicycles, juveniles prefer motorbikes, and adolescents or young adults
predominantly turn to cars.

54

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

Figure 2:
Physical Harm Inflicted on Crime Victims by Young Offenders
in the Federal Republic of Germany- Comparing 2 German Cities in Similar Time Periods —(Source: Pfeiffer et al. and Elsner/Molnar)

City and Type of
Crime

Munich: All Violent
Crimes as
Committed byYoung Persons
Below 25 Years ofAge(511 and 640
Cases)

Share in PerCent
in the Year1989
(Munich)and in the Year1993
(Hannover)

Change between
the Starting Yearand the Final YearNo Substantial Physical
Harm

20.2

+ 3.9

Some Harm, But No
Substantial Treatment
Necessary

47.9

Type of Harm

Munich = 1998
(10 year Period)
Hannover 1998 (5year Period)

-

3.5

+ 1.1
25.2

Substantial Harm: Medical
Treatment Necessary

-

1.1

6.7

Severe Harm: ClinicalTreatment and/or Surgery

Hannover: All
Cases of Robbery
as Committed byYoung Persons
Below the Age of21(123 and 203
Cases)No Substantial PhysicalHarm
Some Harm, But No
Substantial Treatment
Necessary
Substantial Harm: Medical
Treatment Necessary
Severe Harm: ClinicalTreatment and/or Surgery

57.7+ 10.3

22.8

-

0.6

16.3

-

7.4

3.3

-

2.3

Additional Information on Munich: Life Threatening Consequences: 2 Cases in 1989 and 9 Cases in 1998 //Homicides: 2 Cases in 1989, 4 Cases in 1998.

55

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

Figure 3 demonstrates the difference between major offences and minor offences, and the difference
between young males and young females. It summarizes the main average results of all reliable studies on
self-reported offending in Germany among young people up to 1996. Let us consider for example the leftpart of the graph. We see: On their path to adulthood between 97 and 54 per cent of the young males,depending on the exact age group and the exact time frame and other moderator variables, admitted to faredodging at least once. The young females are not so far away from that very high figure: between 89 and 21
per cent of them declared themselves as offenders so far. Let us then turn to the right part of the graph,concerning the crime of robbery (including violent extortion): here the maxima are 27 and 10 per cent
“only”, the minima are 5 and 1 per cent.
Figure 3:
Juvenile Criminality in Germany: MiniMax Results of Self-Report Studies up to 1996

120

97

FemaleMinimum

100

86

80

68

74
54

60

55
54

45

41

33

40

28

21

ut
ho

1

on
or

ti

B
e

xt

th

/E

g
in

FemaleMaximum

ry

ay

D
of
on
ti

it

ca

w

ri

ou

t

ab

g

/F

in

ur

nk

io

ri

av

or

D

eh
B

Male
Maximum

in

g

nt

E

at

le
du

5

Fr

au

um
oc

up
ro
/G
s
ht
ig

/F
g
in
nd
ou
/W

lt
au
ss
A

en

gh
Fi

A
c
ti
lis
da
an

/V
e
ag
am
D
al
in

m
ri
C

ts

s

k
or
W
of
ce
la
P
e

th
at
r
lo
oo
ch

tS
ta
Th

ef

ct

s
di
un
ro
ur
S

te
va
ri
P
in
or

lic
ub
P
in
t
ef
Th

ng

t)
or
sp
an
Tr
lic
ub
(P
ng
gi
od
D
re
Fa
e
pl
im
S

10
9
5

ts

00

18

ill

7
0

21
15

13
10
5

27

be

17

20

P

20

Male
Minimum

25

ob

21

R

Per Cent Values

89

Of course the amount of self-reported crime should come out most differently, for various reasons (e. g.
actual behaviour, remembrance of bygone events), when one compares short time periods with long time
periods. Short periods deliver more accurate and more reliable results. The differences can be aptly
demonstrated with a study done in the German city of Manheim. This citywide representative study aimed
at unveiling a couple of developmental issues among young people. Here I shall only take out the dark fieldissue, and group similar offences together in four groups for the sake of clarity of the structures in offending.
As one can see on the left hand side of the graph the young people in Mannheim confessed, 82 per cent for
their life time, and 51 per cent for the period of the “last year” before the interview was taken, to havecommitted at least one offence belonging to one of those four crime groups. (Actually: many of themconfessed to much more than just one offence, but the details are not important here). Apart from the overall
figure: Fare dodging was – again – the most common offence, followed by theft and fraudulent offences.
Violent acts, even when including acts of damaging property, occurred seldom. The new offence of so to
speak computer pirating will be now considerably higher than in the early 90’s, in my opinion.

56

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

Figure 4:
Juvenile Criminality in Germany: Self Reported Offences of Young People in the City ofMannheim (14-21 Years of Age) 1991
90

82
80

69

70

Last YearPer Cent Value

60

55
51

50

36

40

30

21
20

Lifetime
15
11

10

10
7

0
Whole Prevalence
Rate

Fare Dodging /Driving without
License, etc.

Theft, Fraudulent
Behaviour

Violence andCriminal Damage

Illegal Use ofComputer software,etc.

In terms of individual prevention not all offences indispensably or even urgently deserve to beprosecuted. Not every offender will be “sucked” or “forced” into a delinquent or criminal career if some or
all of his/her offences go undetected. There is normally no kind of deterministic “way into crime” or an
imminent danger of auto dynamic life complications that may eventually end up in deviant life styles
intersected with occasional or continuous criminal acts. We do know from many research studies, and fromstatistical data analyses, that most young offenders commit crimes under opportunistic circumstances. Manyother young offenders commit crimes on of the spur of the moment (e. g. acts of spontaneous rage or
jealousy), a condition that will diminish in the course of maturation. Other young offenders commit crimes
only during a rather short and clearly delineated period of time, and grow out of that as soon as the specificlife situation is terminated (e.g. orientation crises in school during puberty).
So far (and only so far) it is not a heavy reason for concern to learn that only a very tiny part of all
offences young people commit comes to the knowledge of the police. Even repeated offending does notnecessarily lead to truly high detection rates. This can aptly be demonstrated with Figure 5 . Hereresearchers asked some 1,500 male first year students from three universities in East and West Germany
whether they had committed selected offences belonging to the category of “control dependent” acts and, if
so, how often they did commit them. After that they asked the subjects in how many events the police were
notified of the acts or detected them by their own crime scene control strategies (like in the case of drunk
driving). Figure 5 shows only the whole numbers for all three universities together. The most “prolific”
offenders had a detection risk of maximally 10 per cent. The less prolific but still considerably active
offenders told the researchers they had not been detected at all in three of the four crime categories, butreported the opposite – the highest rate of all groups on drunken driving.

57

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68
Figure 5:
Offending Among German Students: Rate of Offences Becoming Known to the Police (1,519
Males at 3 Universities, 1991)

2.2
4.2

Drunk Driving (N = 685)

10 + Offences

1.7
0.5
9.9
0

Department Store Theft(N = 691)

6-10 Offences

1.4
2.6
2.1

Driving Vehicle without
License (N = 809)

02-5 Offences

1.6
1
9.9
0

Fare Dodging Public
Transport (N = 1,292)

1 Offence

1.4
2.6
0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Per Cent of Self-Reported Acts Said to Have Come to the Knowledge of the Police

This result has some implications also for general preventive as well as for individual preventive effortsof the police. Even doubling or tripling the efforts of controlling young people and potentially “critical”
places and situations would presumably lead to only a limited increase in clearing rates, in detecting andapprehending young offenders. This leaves open an important other function of publicly visible if notdeliberately somewhat symbolically exaggerated extensive and/or intensive policing: Reminding (potential)
offenders not to become too daring or reckless, and ensuring (potential) victims the police would be alreadypresent or come to the scene within a short period of time in the case of a victimizing event.
The police could, however, try to co-operate with so-called informal agents of social control. This abstractscholarly term encompasses e.g. peers, youth club leaders and personnel, youth associations on the local
level, kindergarten nurses, schoolteachers and, not to forget, parents. With regard to initiating or toenhancing person-to-person, and therefore potentially very forceful crime prevention efforts, the police
could activate them to take juvenile delinquency more seriously in principle, to look at with more scrutiny
those they are living with or directly responsible for, and to initiate procedures of counselling, help andeventually strict control if things start to get out of control. The police could also serve as a kind of facilitator
agency for other societal or community groups that do not have the capacity to offer advise and support foryoung people but quite often do not know enough about where problem areas are situated or where young
people are becoming endangered most.
How important that idea might be can clearly be demonstrated with Figure 6. Here researchers in two
German cities performed detailed self-report studies combined with a survey on values, life concepts andperceptions of crime and crime control among young kids. As one sees, friends are, simply due to group lifeand group behaviour, very well aware of acts of criminal damage and theft. Parents do know considerable
amounts of thefts and assaults their kids have committed. Teachers are at least informed about a certain partof the assaults, of course mainly those occurring on school grounds.

58

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

Figure 6:
Offences Committed by School Kids in Germany: Amount of Knowlege Among other Persons
70

66

Criminal Damage

Per Cent of Known Offences

60

50

43

42
40

40

Assaults/Fights/Wounding
30

28

29
23

20

11
10

Theft / Fraud etc.

7
4

4

3

0
Friends

Parents

Teachers

Police(1,912 Self-Reported Offences of 13-17 Year Old Kids in 2 Cities, 1987)

II. THE IMPORTANT BUT NEVERTHELESS LIMITED ROLE OF JUVENILE JUSTICE
IN DEALING WITH YOUTH CRIME AND, AS A POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCE OF ITSINTERVENTIONS, IN PREVENTING FURTHER OFFENCES AND EVENTUALLY
CRIMINAL CAREERS
Let us turn now away from those research results on the “realities” of youthful offending, and turn to thefurther question whether (police as crime controllers or so-called law enforcers) public prosecutors and youth
court judges can contribute their part to preventing crimes and juvenile or adolescent criminal recidivism,and so cut off imminent long- term criminal careers.
The generalized answer to that question, based on many research studies in many countries, andsometimes even convincingly backed up by experimental studies, goes like this:• It is important that the juvenile justice system does function in a consistent and predictable manner.
• It is important that the juvenile or youth justice practitioners try consistently to interact with thelocal police on the one hand, and with youth institutions, juvenile volunteer workers, schools andother “agents of education and professional knowledge” on the other hand, in order to get first handknowledge on what the situation is all about and what means and ways community resources could
provide for young people at risk or in danger.
• It is important that the youth justice system sticks with proportional sanctions, utmost with the idea
not to get automatically stronger or stiffer in general, and deliberately not so in cases of offenders,which show up, repeatedly with rather minor offences. Intensive early interventions bear the real
danger of paving the way for more intense further offending instead of preventing it.
• It is feasible and not leading to increases in youth crime, sometimes even leading to faster pathways
out of crime, to make use of quick informal reactions instead of formal ones in cases of youth
presenting only minimal risk.
• It is feasible and not leading to increases in youth crime, sometimes even leading to faster pathways
out of crime, to offer/administer socially inclusive community based programmes instead of imposing
criminal sanctions in cases of youth with medium risk.
A couple of countries, including Germany, changed their juvenile policing and juvenile justice policies
accordingly from the 70’s of the last century on. The first guiding idea is that sometimes the experience of
having been caught and interrogated is in itself a sufficient “sanction” for good mannered young people. The
second guiding idea is that informal procedures can be more aptly “tailored” along the different
requirements of individual cases and along the different “needs” of individual offenders. The third guiding

59

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

idea is that if and insofar as young people learn to understand the “personal implications” of their offences
for others in processes of direct educational communication, this will be followed by comparatively long
lasting resocialization effects.

Figure 7 demonstrates that the German juvenile justice system continued also in the years from 1980 to2000 on its generalized pathway towards informal and/or educational handling of cases dealing with young
offenders.
Figure 7:
Juvenile Justice in Germany: On the Path towards Informal Procedures
1980-2000
100%
90%
80%

44

50

Informal Procedures

Per Cent Values

70%

61

67

69

60%
50%
40%
30%

56

Formal Procedures

50

20%

39

33

31

1995

2000

10%
0%
1980

1985

1990
Selected 5 year Periods

Figure 8 demonstrates the steadily increasing role of the juvenile prosecutor in the course of thatdevelopment.
Figure 8:Juvenile Justice in Germany: The Change from Formal to Informal Procedures, and the
Rising Influence of the Juvenile Prosecutor
1980-2000
60

56
51

50
50

Diversion by Juvenile
Prosecutors

45

39
Per Cent Values

40
38

33
31

Diversion by Prosecutor->Judge

13

Diversion by Juvenile
Judge

30
22

22

20
20

16

16

12
10
10

8

7

6

5

1995

2000

0
1980

1985

1990

Selected 5 Year Periods

60

Formal Procedure /Decision

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

Figure 9 indicates that this juvenile justice system felt not constrained or “forced” in these difficult years
to turn the pace of events: Instead, it made less use than ever before of short term youth detention
measures; and it administered the criminal penalty of youth imprisonment in a consistently cautious manner.
Figure 9:Juvenile Justice in Germany: Development of the Sanctioning Structure
1980-2000
100%

7

8
90%
11

10

6

6

6

8

5

5

Y out h I m pr i s onm e nt ( 5M ont hs up t o 5 Y e a r s )

80%

19

21
26

Per Cent Values

70%
60%

32
36

S hor t Te r m J uv e ni l e
D e t e nt i on ( up t o 4 W e e k s )

50%
40%
69

67

For m a l E duc a t i ona l or
D i s c i pl i na r y M e a s ur e s

61

30%
50
20%

44

10%

Informal Education /D i v e r s i on

0%
1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Selected 5 Year Periods

Figure 10 shows that there are still some differences in the amount the different German states makeuse of informal procedures and decisions in youth crime cases; however, the differences are smaller now
than they used to be some 30 years ago when the new development started. Our so-called city-states among
the now 16 “Laender” of the federation stay traditionally on the top; however, the new states in East
Germany adopted this policy in a remarkable manner within a few years after the unification.
Figure 10:
Juvenile Justice in Germany: State Policy and Practice Differences with Regard to Diversion
Saarland50

Bayern62
67

Baden-Wuerttemberg

69

Rheinland-Pfalz
Hessen72

Sachsen-Anhalt (New State East)

73

Thueringen (New State East)

74
75

Sachsen (New State East)
Schleswig-Holstein

77

Berlin (Separate City State)78

Mecklenburg-V (New State East)

81

Brandenburg (New State East)

82
83

Bremen (Separate City State)85

Hamburg (Separate City State)
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Per Cent Values

61

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

III. SELECTED MEASURES, INITIATIVES, PROGRAMMES AND SANCTIONS THATSHOWED TO BE HELPFUL ABOVE THE AVERAGE IN EDUCATING AND
TREATING YOUNG OFFENDERS, AND TO CONTRIBUTE TO EFFECTIVE AND
EFFICIENT PREVENTIVE EFFORTS
Research results and statistical analyses provide us internationally with always the same message: one
should not expect to change young peoples’ offence-related behaviour patterns or their whole lifestyle atonce due to how ever conceived or tailored measures and/or sanctions and/or penalties. In the middle time
range (that is up to 5 or 6 years) different interventions tend to “produce” not so much different “results” interms of further offending or, not to forget, also desistance of crime. The reasons have a lot to do with habits
and ingrained behavioural patterns on the one hand, with complex environmental and interactional factors on
the other hand. However, many young persons do respond nevertheless rather quickly in a positive way ifthey are being offered measures and sanctions that bear for them the immediate perceptual “appeal” of being
personally, interpersonally or socially meaningful. I shall point at some of them, as used (also) in West
European countries, that proved to be better in practice than other measures and sanctions, and that areworthwhile to be tested more intensely in the future. Only a few of them are in a more than preliminary or
superficial way already backed up by valid and reliable scientific data. So they need further intense scholarly
scrutiny, too.

Figure 11:
Prevention of Youth Crime: Community Oriented and Multi-Agency Initiatives and Institutional
Programmes in Continental Europe










“Task Sanctions”
Deferred Prosecution
Pre-Probation“Prosecutor Initiated Diversion Courses”“Community Service Orders” with supervision and work guidancePeers as “Conflict Mediators” in Schools
Houses of Youth Justice
Neighbourhood Justice Centres“Treatment instead of Punishment”: Self-Obligating Placement in Intensive Drug
Education and Treatment Houses Vocational Education in Youth Prison: Inviting normal Youngster to Join in Victim-Offender Mediation

62•

So-called task sanctions have been invented in the Netherlands. Here the police are transferring
young offenders, after first giving them a thorough interrogation and addressing their “needs”,
immediately to specialized local juvenile task forces or youth offending teams. These offer the young
culprits in a clear manner some possibilities on how fast and how intense they could and should“work off” their “debt toward society” caused by the offence(s). If the young person consents a kindof contract is initiated, the parents and the prosecutorial office are informed by telephone, and the
youngsters are sent directly to the place where they can deliver their work and fulfil the “task” toshow practical repentance. For example: They repair, if necessary with repeated efforts, a children
playground that has been damaged by themselves, by their comrades or by unknown other youths. If
more appropriate, the youth team sends the young person home to their families and asks them totalk to their parents first, and then to return in order to start their efforts.

•

Deferred Prosecution is predominantly used in Austria. The new Juvenile Justice Act there entitles
the juvenile prosecutors (and, in a later stage of the procedure the juvenile judge, too) to postpone
officially and explicitly cases where there is no doubt about the young persons authorship of the act,
his/her legal guilt, and the necessity to enter an educational procedure. Then the prosecutor canoffer the young defendant and his/her parents to either develop within a short period of time own

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

ideas as how things could and would be “rectified” again. If this seems not suitable or promising hewill direct them to municipal youth service institutions and/or to local volunteer associations thatoffer e.g. so-called social training courses lasting up to six months. The probationary period can be
up to two years duration. If the programme is successfully terminated, the case will be closed.
•

Pre-Probation is quite similar in substance to deferred prosecution. It pertains, however, to juvenile
court judges’ jurisdiction in more severe cases where the penalty of youth imprisonment seems
under normal conditions indispensable. This crime prevention measure was invented, some decadesago, by juvenile court judges in Southern Germany. If a young person is charged by the prosecutor
with a rather heavy offence or with a whole series of offences of so to speak only middle quality, thejudge may check, assisted by the local youth court aid agency, whether the young defendant has
shown promising signs of personal or behavioural improvement since the time of committing theoffence(s) and since the time of having been caught and interrogated. If this is clearly the case, thejudge pronounces the appropriate penalty. But then he declares to hold the case open for a maximumof six months. He orders the youngster to turn to a “personal counsellor” who may be a probation
officer, a youth court aide, or an experienced volunteer. If things develop well, perhaps even in an
optimal manner, the judge will decide, after these six months, to grant probation for two to three
years. Otherwise he has now convincing evidence that this young guy deserves to be sent to prison.

•

Prosecutor-initiated diversion courses are local crime prevention schemes being run in many
regions e.g. in Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium. Some local prosecutorial offices “invented”
such courses themselves. Others were and still are helpful in establishing and stabilizing suchcourses, also by providing financial support by means of so-called “poenas” (summary monetary
obligations) imposed on (wealthy) adult offenders. The prosecutor tells the young person that theprosecution will be terminated as soon as he/she has participated constantly and in a provable active
manner in the course activities. These activities can be and actually are wide spread. The range goesfrom traffic education to environmental improvement work up to intense trial programmes.

•

Community service orders with integrated supervision and work guidance arrangements are being
used in German cities with the aim to reach those young offenders that are capable of doing manual
work but because of one reason or another are not able to master the requirements of stable anddurable engagement necessary for a job or a standard vocational education programme. The juvenile
prosecutor or, after a charge, the juvenile judge imposes a certain amount of community service
units (e.g. 150 hours of work for a charitable organization), and sends the young person to
specialized schemes provided by youth probation associations. These associations hire and support
qualified “work trainers” which accompany the youngsters rather closely during the first hours of
their work in the community, and teach them how to cope, how to get and maintain motivated, and soon. If this is successful, the intensity and frequency of guidance is gradually diminished. Eventually
the substantially improved youngster will be helped in finding either a place/firm where he can entera regular vocational education programme or a decent job to start with on his way back into normal
society.

•Peers as conflict mediators in schools have been used for the last ten years all over Germany incases of severe bullying or violent fights or intense damaging of school property or other persons
belongings. Volunteer students receive up to 50 or even more training hours, paid for, for example,
by the communities or voluntary associations or victim support initiatives. Those who qualify arethen appointed officially as conflict mediators or “conflict guides”. Students acting out or repeatedly
being aggressive or oppressive towards their classmates or towards other schoolchildren are sent tothese guides. But the guides can take also initiative out of their own motion. If they can solve theconflict eventually so that the victim, the class teacher, the school principal, the parents of thevictim, the parents of the offender, and finally the offender himself declare their being content withthe result, the case will not be reported to the police or the prosecutor. Alternatively the teacher orthe school principal may feel obligated to report the case to the competent authorities, or school
regulations may require them to report. In this case they can inform the juvenile prosecutor byphone, explain the situation to him, and ask for his consent to retain the case within the realm ofschool affairs. If the prosecutor is eventually informed about the successful regulation, he is legally
entitled to qualify the informal procedure as “sufficient diversionary endeavour”. This allows him
then to close the case officially without any further intervention.

63

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68•

Houses of “Youth Justice” or “Neighbourhood Justice Centres” in neighbourhoods with a large
population of young people are active, for example, in France, Belgium and, in the last five to ten
years, also in some German cities. They offer integrated services for victims, offenders, relatives,family members and other people concerned about or affected by a crime or its consequences.
Depending on the local traditions and/or resources, social workers, youth workers, municipal
administrative specialists, part time therapists, members of victim assistance associations, probation
officers with part time assignments, police community liaison officers, juvenile prosecutors with parttime assignments, or even a juvenile judge (ad hoc) can and will collaborate and cooperate. In the
optimal case this guarantees a fast, efficient and effective solution of conflicts, either conflicts that
led to an offence, or conflicts that developed out of an offence.
In the South-Western German city of Stuttgart the State ministry of justice, the mayor of the city,
the community youth authority, the local youth prosecutors office, the local youth court and thepolice created, in the suburb of Cannstatt, a “House of Youth Law”. There all these institutions areworking in close partnership. They have day-to-day working contacts. They enter into detailed andvery concrete discussions about the “needs” of every offender. And they try hard to come to as muchconsensual decisions as possible of what should be done and who should do it and who should takethe responsibility for the case management and its termination.

•

The concept of “treatment instead of punishment”, as it is called colloquially in Germany, wasinserted by a special Act of law into the German Drug Law already many years ago. It allows the
youth prosecutor as well as the adult prosecutor to defer the execution of a court sentence ofimprisonment between one month and two years in adult cases, and between six months and two
years in juvenile cases. He can do so, if the young drug dependant offender (irrespective whether hehas been punished for a drug crime or for another offence) offers convincingly that he or she willturn voluntarily to a private or municipal intense drug treatment programme offering a residential
place there with other drug dependant persons. Those others could be offenders, too, or also nonoffenders or ex-offenders living there due to other reasons, but in any case on a voluntary base. If
suitable the prosecutor can take the initiative, tell the young offender about the chance, send him to
the programme activists, and eventually ask him, at a pre-fixed date, whether he is prepared tovolunteer. If he does so, and if the programme managers report successful termination of thetreatment, the prosecutor quashes the execution of the prison term.

•

The central youth prison of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg in Adelsheim has, inter alia, aprofessionally equipped vocational education department where young prisoners can enter anapprenticeship qualifying them eventually for some 20 different job careers as defined in state andemployers associations’ regulations. The machinery there and the additional technical devices are soelaborated that no other firm or plant in the whole rural region where the youth prison is being
located can offer comparable possibilities for young people. This led the prison warden, the work
masters and the teachers to the idea to open the prison vocational education department for young
people from outside. They offered this to the local community, other communities of the region, andto selected firms with a good reputation. After some hesitance and deliberations and visits to theprison, the offer was accepted.
Nowadays young prisoners learn and work side by side with perfectly “normal” young apprentices
from outside. They experience, seeing everyday living role models, what social integration means.
The young “normals” on the other side learn to understand severe offenders as persons and not justas “those hopeless criminals”. A third group of young people consist of offenders, which make use ofthat opportunity as part of a diversionary programme they were assigned to, or as a voluntary
accepted condition in the realm of a probation order. This programme has convincing success as
such. Practical experience demonstrates also its beneficial consequences in blocking off a further
criminal career on the part of the offenders. No single case was up to now reported where a“normal” young apprentice was induced to commit a crime due to his working in the prison
environment and due to his close contacts with problematic offenders.

•64

Victim-Offender Mediation is embedded in a world-wide new movement towards alternatives to thejuvenile justice system in general or at least towards more meaningful reactions within that system,
be it as a diversionary measure, be it as part of probation or parole arrangements, or be it as ameasure in its own right which eventually may lead to a discretionary termination of the procedure,

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

in severe cases but to a mitigating of the sentence to be imposed.
The leading idea of VOM is to engage the victim and the offender, if necessary also their family, theirfriends and other implied persons, in a dynamic procedure of mutually demanding, but eventually“healing” meetings. The conflicts leading to a crime and/or the conflicts resulting out of the crimeand its consequences shall be dealt with in an open atmosphere by way of mutually helpful talks,
discussions, exchange of views or, quite often at least in the first stages, highly emotional
expressions of sadness, fear, rage or despair. Therefore it needs a well trained mediator or anotherexperienced conflict solution facilitator who masters the task to remain neutral, to guide theparticipants through the whole demanding “affair”, and to let them eventually find nothing but“their” own mutually acceptable or even rewarding “solution”. Concepts related to VOM are, forexample, on a rather concrete level, Restitution of the damage done or the personal harm caused
and, on a rather high and more penal policy level, Restorative Justice. There exists already a whole
host of books, articles and other documents. Therefore it may suffice here just to mention the basic
approach.

IV. CRIME PREVENTION CONCERNING REPEAT OR CHRONIC OFFENDERS
Repeat and chronic offenders make out an only limited part of the total of (young) offenders. But they
commit so many offences that they take a more than proportional share of the total amount of crime asstemming out of the whole birth cohort they are belonging to. International research and experience shows,that - as a thumbnail rule – within a given year some 3 to 5 per cent of the members of a birth cohort are
responsible for some 30 to 40 per cent of all crimes. Under a longitudinal perspective the relationshipremains structurally the same. However, the dimensions change as the levels go up. This can aptly bedemonstrated with Figure 12. It shows the results of a research study performed by the criminologicalresearch unit of the Bavarian Police in Germany. All 14-year-old youngsters living in Munich, who became
known to the Munich police for a criminal offence, were followed up for the next five years in a prospective
design.
The results are clear-cut. Just to point at the extremes here. The one-time young offenders sharedroughly 34 per cent of the offender total, but contributed only roughly 5 per cent to the offence total. The
multiple offenders who committed 20 or more offences took a share of some 10 per cent of the total offendergroup, but they contributed with some 52 per cent to the offence total.
Some of those multiple offenders are basically “bad guys”. That means: whatever the real causes of theircriminal propensity may be, and how decisively we may be convinced to get them eventually out of theirdelinquent habits: their offences are not (visibly) related to any psychological impairment or to any family
problem or to any environmental distortion, to name just a few of possible correlates of crime.
However, the majority tends to have complex personal or socio-psychological or economic problem
constellations. They really need quite often substantial educational and correctional interventions in order toenable and empower them in the middle or long run to turn (themselves!) their way of live and their deeprooted problematic behaviour patterns around, that means towards a normal and socially integrated way ofliving.
The question is now: Are there concepts or/and instruments with which we can distinguish those among
them being definitely at risk of entering into a long lasting and stable criminal career, as opposed to theothers who are at present in difficult personal and/or life conditions but not already on the way towards
chronic offending?
Based on the ground laying work of Professor Hans Goeppinger, the founder of the now some 40 years
ongoing “Tuebingen Criminal Behaviour Development Study, TCBDS”, we use in Tuebingen the so-called“Method of Ideal-type Oriented Comparative Individual Case Analysis” (MIVEA in German: Methode deridealtypisch vergleichenden Einzelfallanalyse). This method proved to be astonishingly good in
discriminating between those young persons already (but not necessarily in a deterministic and invariable
manner!) crime prone, and the others being only in temporary risky situations or in acute risk of deviating.

65

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

Figure 12:
Offenders and Offences: The Role of Repeat or Chronic Offenders for the Impact of Crime onSociety60

51.5

Offenders with 1
Offence50

Offenders with 2-4
Offences

Per Cent Values

40

33.7

33.8

30

Offenders with 5-9
Offences

18.5

20

13.2

12.7
9.7

10

12.5

Offenders with 10-19
Offences

9.6
4.9
Offenders with 20 +Offences

0
Share of Offenders

Share of Offences

Offences Recorded by the Munich Police for 14 Year old Juveniles in 1991: FollowUp = 5 Years

Figure 13:
Crime Related Behavioural Syndrome= Set of Factors among Young Persons
Indicating a High Individual Risk to Become Delinquentor Even Criminal in the Near FutureInterrelated Elements of the Syndrome:66Denial or Avoidance of Duties at Home,
together with

Denial or Avoidance of Duties at School or in other Institutional or Social
Relationships
together with

Unreasonable/Unsound Use of Money and/or Individual Posessions
together with

Total Lack of Structure in Leisure Time Use Respectively Activities
together with

Total Lack of Life Plan/Highly Vague or Unrealistic Ideas About Own Future
Existence

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

The central criterion is the so-called “Kriminovalente Konstellation” which may suitably translate into
English as “Crime Related Behavioural Syndrome”. Figure 13 depicts that syndrome and its core elements.
In order to be considered as a real syndrome in the methodological sense of the term all single elements
must be there at once and provable to exist by clear pieces of evidence. There are explanatory rules about
what the exact meaning of the terms is, and when a given symptom can be regarded as sufficiently
developed to be coded accordingly. Figure 13 delineates only the set of factors as such.
Under regular conditions one may find one or more single elements of the syndrome among occasional
offenders or even among otherwise fully normal young men. In this case these elements are of limited
individual prognostic value, as are any other isolated or singled out elements of a person in its social
relationships. They may be considered, then, as a kind of risk factor [ses below]. The whole syndrome, as a“complex unit of interacting and interwoven elements”, is a peculiar “property” so to speak of (future)
repeat or chronic offenders. This should not be misunderstood as a kind of static concept of personality or, inthe extreme, as a kind of negative determinism. The concept allows, in the opposite, for change. Already
Goeppinger, the scholar who was laying the ground for the methodology, made it quite clear that people canchange their attitudes, mind sets, and behavioural patterns, even if one would be basically sceptical, as he
was indeed, with regard to the more fundamental anthropological/psychological/psychiatric/psychotherapeutic
question whether their “personality” as such could be changed.
Therefore Goeppinger advised his collaborators to be reluctant, and not to predict any further developmentwith a time frame of more than five years at the maximum. He insisted that each and every client/offender
be freshly, and in as neutral a manner as possible, studied on any occasion where decisions about his future
life were to be prepared. For it could never be excluded that in the course of life at least one and possibly an
important negative factor has faded away, and been substituted by a positive factor. To put this in practicalperspective: Even if a young offender did show all elements of the crime related behavioural syndrome at
the time of adjudication, he deserves to be given a chance to prove change during his prison term, if it comesto a decision to deny or to grant parole or conditional release. The syndrome as a whole would, so to speak,“disappear” if only one and single element had turned toward “normality”, e.g. if the prisoner had beenenabled by correctional programmes, or been capable enough out of his own endeavours, to become a dutyoriented young man. In that case the remaining elements could and should be included in an expertise thatweights “chances” (= favourable factors) with “risks” (= unfavourable factors) in the present life situation.
Compared to this crime related syndrome which is therefore an instrument for an individually oriented
prognosis, the other syndromes we use, e. g. for expertise in court or in youth prisons for conditional
release decisions, are in substantial and methodological perspectives of no direct prognostic value. I shallhere only show two of these syndromes. The first one is called the “School Syndrome” (Figure 14):

Figure 14:
School Syndrome= Set of Factors Among Young Persons Indicating an Unspecific Risk for Juveniles to Become
Delinquent or Even Criminal in the Near Future
Highly Relevant if Interrelated with the
Crime Related Behavioural Syndrome
Elements of the School Syndrome:Extensive and Intensive Truancy
Lack of Attentiveness when Present Irregular or Lazy Fulfilment of Homework

Avoidance of Any Extracurricular Activity
 Lack of Achievement Orientation
 Negative Emotions toward Teachers
Negative Feelings about Well Behaving Students
 Disciplinary Problems
 Self-Image as “Bad Student” or “Loser”




67

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

The second syndrome is called the “Contact and Leisure Time Syndrome” (Figure 15, below).
Those syndromes are, seen in methodological perspective, just another example of what psychologists
and developmental criminologists tend to call predictors. They indicate a certain heightened risk for eachand every young person showing the main elements of the relevant syndrome(s) to offend once or twice oreven a couple of more times in the near future. But this is predominantly an aggregate risk or, put into more
everyday language, a rather unspecific danger for young persons as a collective. If nothing improves in theireveryday life situation or with regard to their prevailing behaviour pattern by appropriate
guidance/educational offers/help to parents in terms of secondary crime prevention for these youth at risk,
the danger of falling into crime may become more imminent for them in due course of time.
Figure 15:
Contact and Leisure Time Syndrome= Set of Factors Among Young Persons
Indicating an Unspecific Risk for Juveniles to Become Delinquent or Even Criminalin the Near Future
Highly Relevant if Interrelated with the Crime Related Behavioural Syndrome
Elements of the Contact and Leisure Time Syndrome:









Socializing mainly with “Pals” instead of close friends
Leaving Home Without Parents’ Knowledge
If at Home: No Useful Hobbies: “Dependent” on Videos, PlayStation
Preference of Violent Media Content
Strolling Around Without Any Clear Idea of What Might Happen or Could be
Done in the Next Few Hours
Sensation Seeking: “Lust” for Noisy and/or Risky Environments
Restlessness/Penchant towards Vehicles/Joy Riding

One has nevertheless to bear in mind: There are youth living a life “at the edge” for some months oreven for one or two years who master it later on, alone or with the help of caretakers and parents, to get outof the dangerous life constellation. In any case: It is always worthwhile to offer those persons afflicted
multifaceted and multi-agency programmes in school and the community that provide the endangered
juveniles an incentive to join in voluntarily with others they know or get easily acquainted with.
As those multi-problem crime prone young offenders are concerned on the other side, it is a very hard
and time and energy consuming endeavour to correct them, and to eventually enable them to turnthemselves viz. their life around in the direction of a law abiding and more or less decent life. Our recent
European experiences with longitudinal studies show us that the average time one would need to educate
those difficult young people accordingly amounts to some seven years. There is, if only a real substantial
treatment effort takes place, so far no substantial difference between treatment in institutions and treatmentin the community. Even youth imprisonment, which I would in principal like to be reduced to an absolute
minimum – guided by the idea of last resort in cases of very heavy crimes and/or very threatening young
offenders – cannot be discarded in that respect.
Due to complex psychological predispositions and due to their often negative and frustrating life
experiences from early childhood on many of these young persons do show what can be characterized, inrather abstract terminology, as delayed maturation. They need, in other words, more time to overcome
adaptation difficulties and to develop a full or at least moderately stable adult identity. The delay has, as far
as we can see from German data and experiences, a time/life span of some five to ten years compared toaverage young persons out of the standard population. This timeframe seems typical for West-Europe ingeneral. Other regions of the world, however, may have other psychosocial or biosocial or bio-psychologicalconditions, which influence the modal way of maturation among their upcoming generations in general. This
may eventually lead, then, to shorter or longer timeframes for the maturational delay of the difficult young
persons than it is the case in Europe.

68129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

Developmental psychologists and scholars in the field of sociology of youth argue that nowadays thesomehow “extended” phase of youthfulness among young persons in e.g. Western industrial countries
should be set around 25 years, even if they can, and in general are to be, considered as young adults thathave to take responsibility for their acts and omissions. This implies that the more immature deviants could
then be expected to adapt accordingly from this “critical” phase of life development on. Actually we could
show, in a specially designed follow-up analysis of the TCBDS-subjects, that the bulk of changes among therepeat offenders that eventually got out of a criminal career occurred in the life period between 25 years and,at the latest, 35 years.
If this result could be replicated with other studies in other countries, the difficult but eventuallypromising task of educators, psychotherapists, probation officers, prosecutors, judges and correctional
officers, to name but a few, would be not to give up but to keep going with repeated efforts to get theseoffenders on the right track. To put it in a kind of slogan: Patience, stamina, strict guidance and consistency
need to be combined!
An analytical frame of concepts of and prospects for the whole field of crime prevention shall be added
here, in order to demonstrate how complex the issues are when considered in detail, and how careful one
should remain before setting up a cost expensive programme.

V. CRIME PREVENTION BROADLY DEFINED
The topic or field of crime prevention can be delineated as the complex task of guarding and protecting
society against criminal offences. There has been no clear-cut and precisely defined definition till now ofwhat crime prevention is really all about. This situation is not likely to change in the near future. The main
reasons for this sceptical expectation are to be found in the theoretical and practical complexity of thesubject matter having particular significance for the aim of dealing with youth at risk.

VI. TRADITIONAL THREE AREA APPROACH
A rather traditional, but nevertheless basically still useful approach is to make a difference between threeareas of crime prevention which are, in analytical perspective, nicely separated from each other, but whichare, under practical circumstances in real world situations of the committal and control of offenders andoffences, somehow interconnected and interrelated. In problem areas of communities, within so-called multiproblem families or among multi-problem neighbourhood peer groups practitioners may even be confronted
with the heroic task of dealing with an intricate mixture of those areas in all possible dimensions of social
problems and individual disadvantages. In what way ever this might be addressed in concrete countries,
regions, towns, villages or small neighbourhoods, the basic concept is always identical:• Primary Crime Prevention = directed at the community (or particularly the young generation) as awhole,
in order to strengthen the socio-psychological power of the community elements at large;in order to empower people (particularly young persons) for the increase in immunity against
deviant temptations and seductions;in order to enhance positive emotions and values by teaching or by advisory methods;
in order to provide ample opportunities for behavioural patterns during leisure time; andin order to develop measures for enlightening youth.
•

Secondary Crime Prevention = aimed at groups of people at risk, especially young persons at risk,on the one hand, or aimed at reducing opportunities to commit an offence on the other hand.

•

Tertiary Crime Prevention = targeting people who have already been dealt with for delinquent acts
(like status offences among children or juveniles) or have been convicted of a crime, and eventuallysentenced or otherwise been formally dealt with by the competent authorities.

VII. THREE AREA APPROACH REGARDING VICTIMSThe same distinction can be applied in a fruitful manner to victims of crime: Primary prevention of
becoming victimized in general, secondary prevention of becoming victimized in particular situations orunder specific vulnerable conditions like youth at risk in run down public housing environments, and tertiary69

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

prevention of becoming repeatedly victimized after having fallen victim to a crime. Among young persons,for example pupils in schools, “Victimization Prevention” may actually be easier and faster accomplished inpractice than “Crime Prevention” respectively “Criminality Prevention”.

VIII. MODERN APPROACHES OF CRIME PREVENTION
There exist a couple of more modern conceptions of crime prevention. They are theoretically andconceptually not at all, or at least not in the first or second instance, directed towards“changing/sanctioning/treating” (young) persons as such or towards “teaching” persons in an intentional anddirected manner new behavioural patterns or habits or values or morals. They are rather “object-oriented”.
That means they try to re-shape environmental conditions in manifold ways.
This re-shaping will, in the event, cause psychologically determined “perception blockades” among(young) deviants or persons at risk of becoming delinquents regarding the opportunity structure forcommitting offences. That part of the issue is dealt with in the theory and practice of so-called situational
crime prevention. Other conditions will make the costs of committing an offence or of gaining a desired
valuable good seemingly (if not actually) much too high for youth at risk respectively potential (young)offenders, as they would dare to act out. That part of the issue is dealt with in the theory of target hardening.
There exists some empirical evidence that such object-oriented crime prevention measures are evenmore suitable than victimization prevention measures in enabling practitioners to harvest rather immediate
and, sometimes, also enduring successful results in reducing the amount and intensity of (youth) crime incommunities.

IX. THEORY-PRACTICE CONTRADICTIONS
In a host of countries, like in my home country GERMANY, the importance of crime prevention for crime
policy and practical law enforcement as well as for the way in which those persons at risk of committing an
offence (or multiple offences) are treated, and how offenders are dealt with, has - for rather a long time –occupied a prominent position in scholarly theory and in common sense political statements in public. Whenit comes to practice, however, many of those countries have been rather negligent in actually implementing
crime prevention as an integrated institution under everyday conditions in communities and amongcollaborating authorities. Even such nice concepts like problem oriented policing or community policing
were often given more lip service among top-level officers (and city majors or party leaders) than realserious consideration with the aim to implement them in due course of time.
In Europe the Scandinavian countries were the first to change that situation. In Asia and Far East, Japanis internationally renowned for its scheme of local policing which can, to some extent, be theoreticallydelineated as a kind of “making formal social control partially informal” by continuous and stable community
immersion.
In the so to speak reluctant countries, like Germany, new developments have been arising since the early
1990’s. They are directed towards activating authorities, private associations and organizations, andcommunity interest groups (even grassroots movements) to develop interconnected initiatives and local
schemes for crime prevention and victimization prevention. So, for example, the first state-wide Crime
Prevention Council and the first additional living examples of local or regional Crime Prevention Councils
have been founded, on the soil of the Federal Republic of Germany, in the northern State of SchleswigHolstein in 1992. At present some 2,000 to 3,000 initiatives and institutions are working in Germany as awhole in a very dedicated manner. Information about these can be found at the website of the German
Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA, http://www.bka.de)

X. THE ENDURANCE OF LOCAL CRIME, AND THE PIVOTAL NEED FOR COMMUNITYCRIME PREVENTION INITIATIVES AND INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES
The globalization of crime and the activity of transnational crime notwithstanding: Still, and also today, alarge proportion of day-to-day crimes, particularly among young persons, takes place at a local level,
according to the experience of practitioners, and backed up by the results of modern scholarly research. The
offences as such are “local events”. The offenders are, to a certain extent, but the “products” of local

70

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

conditions and circumstances, of sometimes very idiosyncratic concrete, nevertheless enduring, “breeding
factors or syndromes”.
The same is very often true for victimization events and for the individual victims. Therefore it is vitaland of utmost importance to develop clear and convincing concepts of community crime prevention.
Community crime prevention concentrates, on the one hand, its energies on the modification, reduction or
ultimately even full eradication of crime as an “actual occurrence”.
On the other hand, community crime prevention showed, in the last decades, its capacity to serve as anefficient tool in reducing or avoiding peoplesÅL fear of crime, particularly the fear of crime among elderly
persons as young (potential) offenders in the community are concerned. As we all know, fear of crime is an
important factor hampering the quality of life of decent people. In towns and particularly big cities it canaffect the whole set of daytime living patterns, of nighttime precautionary measures and of ways to see theworld as either safe or dangerous. Such a set may develop into a complex and very stable kind of basic
worldview with related behavioural patterns. The set could be suitably condensed in the term “habitus”
French social scholars tend to use for delineating different social classes or social strata from each other. It
may eventually prevent people (inhabitants and travellers alike) to visit certain parts or ecological areas of
the city.
Fear of crime among citizens is also enhanced, sometimes even mainly caused, by conditions that seem,from the point of view of police practitioners and with regard to local crime statistics, to have nearly nothing
to do with “objective” conditions viz. manifest crime. This is the message explicated in a very influential
manner firstly by Wilson and Kelling in their “broken windows theory”. The core issue pertains to signs ofdecay and dereliction in public places and/or of continual disturbances as perceived to exist or as actuallyexisting at a higher than tolerable level. Such situations are considered by citizens to be the outward sign ofan underlying threat of crime or of the phenomenon of actual crime. A lack of reaction on the part of thepolice or (other) responsible local authorities can eventually result in a widespread loss of trust in thevalidity of the law and in the guarantee of internal security. However, the relationships between the various
factors are to be considered to be much more complex than many adherents of the broken-windows theory
seem to recognize. Nevertheless the basic mechanisms have been repeatedly reiterated in the Federal
Republic of Germany with some 30 citywide crime surveys or so-called citizen surveys.
Instead of disturbances also “disturbing persons” may cause alertness and concern. Among them arequite often young persons hanging around public places. In Germany these were for many years
predominantly punks and minority youths (e.g. second and third generation foreigners). It may beinteresting to note so far that in some of our big cities like Frankfurt and Stuttgart around 25 per cent of the
population is of foreign origin. Many are still non-nationals after many years if not decades of living inGermany due to - inter alia – restrictive laws and a rather reluctant state naturalization bureaucracy. In more
recent years two new groups of young people became somehow the “substitutes” for the old problem
groups. These are in the East, which means in the so-called new States, very aggressive respectively violent
rightwing youngsters, mostly skinheads with a strong penchant towards Nazi ideology.
In the West, in the so-called old states, and with a certain concentration in southern and south-westernstates or areas, one finds instead second generation “Russians” from German descent. Their families used
to live predominantly in Kazakhstan and other remote provinces of the defunct Soviet Union being now
independent states. They returned in high numbers to their old “fatherland” Germany immediately after the
tumbling down of the wall and the falling down of the iron curtain. They are still coming in large numbers,
but much lower ones compared to the early 1990’s. Young boys among those arriving late, i.e. after 1995,
seem to be particularly at risk of becoming delinquent and later on criminal. We shall cite only a few of awhole plethora of reasons and causes for that. Those youngsters were much more integrated into the cultureof their land of birth than were their older siblings and the parents, not to speak about the older generation.
For them their Kazakh peers were their natural friends. They learned the Russian language as fast and as
natural as any other children playing around during free time and/or going to public schools with an“indigenous” majority. For them “Germany” did not exist as a kind of real country one had always to think ofand thrive to belong. It was rather but another tale or old story Grandma and other older people were telling
about on every suitable and, from the youngsters perspective, even more unsuitable occasion.

71

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

The decision to emigrate and to “return” to merry old Germany was, as we learned (also) from our own
research project on processes of integration and disintegration, quite often taken by the parents and elders
without even asking the young persons pro forma about their own opinions, not to speak about theiremotions. From their view they had been forced to leave their home, their peers, their “habitat” and theireveryday living conditions providing stable orientation. When they arrived in Germany they were confronted
with an intricate situation. Ger man constitution and German law consider(ed) them as being“Volksdeutsche”, a term that means- to simplify the matter a bit - pertains to being German by blood
heritage. According to that rule the “Late Re-Immigrants” (Spaetaussiedler) are entitled to receive a
German passport as soon as possible after settling (provisionally) down. They are further entitled toparticular social benefits. These circumstances are considered, to a wide degree, as an unjustified privilege
by indigenous Germans but, sometimes even more explicitly, by the not so German minorities. So it
happens that these new Germans are called Russians and considered the true foreigners by the nominal
foreigners living in the country already for long time.
Those circumstances and situations cause a lot of tensions. Particularly for youngsters their lack ofmastering German comes as an additional burden. They can hardly follow school education. They arehampered also in vocational education and in their place of work. In the event, many of the young boys, as
opposed to young girls, play truant at school, become heavily defiant at home, turn to strong alcohol (withrepeated episodes of binge drinking), get used to or even early addicted to illegal drugs, and quite often joineither retreatist groups or bluntly violent gangs. In pursuance of what they had experienced in their countryof birth they expect e.g. police to be rather brutal, and are prepared to beat them up when caught committing
an offence or when strongly suspected of having committed one or a series of offences. Since German police
do not normally turn to such kind of behaviours the youngsters quickly tend to consider them as being weakpersons. They are, from the youngsters’ perspective, feminized or, just to quote one of the more derisory
terms, “sissies” which deserve contempt and eventually open defiance if not a manifest physical attack.
The more elaborated signs of deviance, delinquency and criminality are nevertheless concentrated
among only a small minority of this minority. So the available sources draw an ambivalent picture. On the
one hand, the general crime rate of the relevant young generation, in as much as it can be measured at all,seems not that much exaggerated as it is discussed publicly or even among academic circles. On the other
hand regional and local police forces do report relatively high numbers of violent acts, committed alone or ingroups or gangs. And in the youth prison system those young male offenders can be found in rising numbers.
For example in the central youth prison of Baden-Wuerttemberg some 10 per cent of the inmates are of“Russian” origin, which is much higher than their share of the general population.
Many communities are still more or less desperately trying to develop a valid concept of reintegrating
the young “latecomers”. Since these boys tend more and more to call themselves “Russians”, and tocommunicate with each other nearly exclusively in the Russian language, the authorities are more often
than not “blocked off” in a very broad sense of the term. More successful communities started to run special
multi-agency or multi-faceted deviance and delinquency prevention programmes. They hired young adults orfull adult persons out of the law-abiding members of the minority that have direct linguistic and otherwise
culturally pre-determined access to the difficult youngsters. Or they relayed to private charity organizations
or individual volunteers. Strict but not aggressive, and permanently visible, control strategies on the part ofthe police are being so to speak “intertwined” with a mix of positive offers like special discos orentertainment opportunities (- primary crime prevention -), of social education or qualification courses forthe very young at particular risk (- secondary crime prevention -), and of clear cut enforcement policies withregard to public troublemaking and the committal of particularly street crime (- tertiary crime prevention -).
As far as the right-wing young East-Germans are concerned, but also with regard to their West-German
counterparts with whom they tend more and more to establish loosely knit but nevertheless rather stablenetworks, the German federal government inaugurated, a couple of years ago, several special programmes.
Two of them are of particular interest.
The one programme having meanwhile terminated was called AGAG, meaning an action programme
against aggression and violence. Some millions of Euros were used to enable local associations and thecommunities themselves to develop schemes of intense treatment of those youngsters. Quite often the72

129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS

associations and communities contracted services out to experienced street-workers, youth aides from
specialized branches of (Western) youth authorities or to new associations that were deliberately createdanew just for the sake of dealing with those particular issues. The results of the programme have never beenvery thoroughly evaluated. As far as one can see from limited evaluation studies the results were mixed
ones. Some street-workers and others could at least diminish the amount of annoying and dangerous
behaviours, and help the young male extremists to “live out” their phase of development without eventually
landing before court or in prison. But there were also cases where the “caretakers” were either much too
tolerant towards the ideology and its expression, or where they even seemed to have been somehow sucked
into the right-wing scene. This seems to have led in a few extreme cases to stabilization if not a further
promotion of the Neo-Nazi scene.
The other programme was run by governmental agencies that sometimes relied on private persons ororganizations, too. The most active governmental agencies were, and still are, the secret services called“Verfassungsschutzaemter”, literally translated as “authorities for defending the constitution”. They
installed, inter alia, some telephone hotlines. They put adverts in newspapers and magazines. They launchedinterviews on radio and television networks. And they got themselves additional budgetary means to run
those activities in a more than just superficial manner. The central aim of all this was and still is: To actively
approach members of the right wing or Neo-Nazi scene and to offer them virtual assistance and, later on,
real advice and (substantial) help in order• to get out of the scene,• to cut off all relations to their radical and quite often very violence prone peers,• to tear off the emotional and ideological strings with the older core persons providing andhammering in the particular ideology and hate orientation, and eventually• to return to a decent life as a normal citizen.
How successful the programme has been in quantitative terms is impossible to evaluate so far. However, theauthorities had some spectacular cases where they succeeded in turning around so to speak publicly known“figures”. This indicates that the particular approach is at least principally sound and worthwhile to follow
further on.
A few years ago, the German Federal Ministry of Justice began installing, apart from but connected to aloosely knit crime prevention information network, a task force on hate crime. This task force is expected toanalyse the different concepts of “hate crime” and to develop new initiatives to tackle those crimes and theirperpetrators firmly.

XI. EARLY INTERVENTION FOR YOUTH AT RISK
Early intervention for youth at risk is, in principle, a valid concept and a worthwhile scheme for shortterm effects or reducing manifest deviant or delinquent behaviour, and in the best case also long term tools
for securing the social and social-psychological integration of young persons in the community at large.

XII. ASSESSMENT SCALES AND SIMILAR INSTRUMENTS OF RISK-CALCULATION
Assessment scales and similar instruments of risk calculation are somehow necessary. However, it isoften overlooked that all of such instruments and methods do not provide more than “predictors” for future
behaviour. They provide decent probabilistic “indicators” of what groups of people with certain
characteristics may do to a certain extent, which normally never reaches the point of certainty. Therefore,
scholars and practitioners need to develop and make use of person-oriented methods, which allow for
individual variance, and provide eventually, in lieu of statistical predictors, individual “prognostic” factors.
[See above].

XIII. THE ESTABLISHMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF A FLEXIBLE DISPOSITION
AND TREATMENT SYSTEM
The establishment and management of a flexible disposition and treatment system with the aim to tackle
child delinquency, juvenile delinquency and youth crime is also somehow necessary. However, it is often
overlooked that such a system is easier to talk about in a general manner than to conceive of in a stringent
and coherent and practically suitable way.

73

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

The relevant problems are grounded in e.g.:• Different “world concepts” of people joining different institutions and/or organizations and/or
authorities.
• Different organizational and operational “philosophies” of authorities themselves, as developed andstrengthened or even “hardened” by years or decades of running the business and dealing with theireveryday workload.
• Inertia effects at all levels of groups, institutions and authorities.
• Inter-relatedness of the individual, family, neighbourhood, school, and other fields and factors
resulting in a “mix” of problems and obstacles to fast and efficient and effective change of things andpersons.
• Expected but not realistically achievable deterrence effects, at least in the short and middle range, ofrepressive sanctions.
• Expected but not realistically achievable “turning effects”, at least in the short and middle range, ofcounselling and treatment effort and measures with regard to the “personality” and the ingrained“habits” of (young) people.

XIV. AS POLICING, PROSECUTORIAL DECISION MAKING, AND JUDICIALDECISION MAKING ARE CONCERNED
There is mounting evidence that one has to develop patience with young offenders instead of trusting in
the immediate real effect of interventions, not to speak of believing in the full social re-integration of young
heavy or repeat or even so-called intensive or chronic offenders. The new concept of “desistance from
crime” tells us stories that are somehow opposed to what we learned from so-called recidivism studies
concentrating on kinds of “criminal careers”. Terminating a criminal career is an option that can be“activated” at each and every step respectively after each and every conviction, sentence or prison term.
Offenders must decide themselves to “do it now”. But they can be helped in coming to that decision, and todevelop than the endurance to carry the whole difficult task to a successful end.

74