INVOLVING COMMUNITY IN YOUTH JUSTICE
Rob Allen*, **This word “community” is used a lot.
We all talk about “the community.” Wet a l k a b o u t c o m m u n it y p e n a l tie s o rcomm unity trea tment or community
sentences or community punishment. We
sometimes don’t really think what wemean by community. Often we just mean
it is the opposite of institutions. So thetitle of this course is about best practicein institutional and community-based
treatment. So it simply means you haveinstitutions and you have the community.
It also has another meaning which isreally about involving ordinary people,
ordinary members of local communities.
Not police or social workers or probation
officers, but ordinary citizens who do notnecessarily have any formal or official
role.
Now, in my country, most of the workwith young offenders that is done in thecommunity is, in fact, done byprofessionals who are paid. I talked about
the youth offending teams w hich are
made up of police, social workers,
probation, health, education. These arepeople who are paid to do these jobs. They
are not really community members inthat sense. What I want to talk today
about is the experience in the U.K. of
involving ordinary people in youth justicein dealing with young offenders.
Before I do that, I want to say a little
bit about the involvement of ordinary* Member of the Youth Justice Board and Directorof the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, London
England** This paper is a transcript of a lecture delivered by
M r. Allen at UNA FEI d uring the 118th
International Training Course.

164

community members in the criminal
justice world—in the wider activities to
do w ith crime—b eca use I think it isim p o r ta n t to s e t it i n c o n t e x t . F o r
example, there is, in the United Kingdom,a l o t o f c o m m u n i t y i n te r e s t i n t h e
reduction and prevention of crime. And
we have a big movement, a bitorganization called Neighborhood Watch.
I don’t know if you have this in yourcountry. Some of you will. Some of you
won’t. In England it was set up in 1982
and it has grown very rapidly. And it isorganized at a street or neighborhood
level and it is ordinary citizens who cometogether and agree that they will watch
over their community to see if there isany crime going on, if necessary, to reportto the police. They will encourage eachother to take care of property—to locktheir cars, to make sure they lock theirhouses and take other kinds of measures.
And this is a big movement in the United
Kingdom. There are more that 150,000
Neighborhood Watch schemes covering
up to 10 million people in the U.K. And
there are about 55 million people all
together. So they claim that it is theb igg es t v olu nta r y m o ve m en t in the
United Kingdom: Neighborhood Watch.
There is another important community
organization which we have heard a little
bit referred to. It is very big in the United
Kingdom, called Victim Support. Victim
Support was set up about 25 years ago
and provides practical advice, help andassistance to victim s of crim e, tow i tne s se s, th e ir f a m ili es a n d t he ir
friends. And it also has a role in raisingpublic awareness about issues to do with
cr i m e a n d to p r o m o t e th e r ig ht s o fvictims. There are about 13,000 trained

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
volunteers who visit and contact victims
of crime. So, a few years ago, where I was
living, my house was broken into andthings were stolen. And within one day, I
had a telephone call from a volunteer who
rang up and said, “I understand that you
have been burgled, your house has beenbroken into. Are you feeling alright? Is
there anything that I can do to come tohelp you?” And I said, “No, that was fine.
That was okay.” But for some people who
get very upset and traumatized by crime,
it is a very important role. So that is an
important community involvement, I
think, in the system.
The third kind of involvement I want tomention is what we call in England andWales “magistrates.” Lay Magistrates. A
lot of criminal offenses are dealt with not
b y p r o f e s s io n a l j u d g e s , b u t b y l a ymagistrates who are ordinary members of
the community. They have training. But
they deal with the vast majority of theless serious crime. It is the first tier of ourcourt system. It’s made up effectively ofvolunteers, magistrates. This is an officethat goes back many hundreds of years.
In the middle a ges, the king used toappoint what he called “justices of thepeace,” local people to take responsibility
for law and order at a local level. We still
have this office of magistrates. I thinkt h e r e a r e a b o u t 2 5 o r 2 6 th o u s a n dmagistrates up and down the country.
And a proportion of those magistrates
deal with young offenders. We have a
special youth court which is made up ofyouth court magistrates and they receive
additional training to do the work in the
youth court.
I want to mention, in this paper, thefact that, in the United Kingdom, we
h ave a l arge nu mber of v olu nta ryorganizations, civil society groups, nongovernmental organizations who are
working in this field. I think in somecountries this civil society sector is welldeveloped and, in other countries, lesswell-developed. A lot of the seorganizations may have their origins withfaith groups, with churches, with otherkinds of religious motivations. Some ofthem are charities. many of them dopractical work to help prevent crime, tohelp offenders and so on. So there is awide range of organizations. An
organization I used to work for, for many
years, called NACR O, the Nation
Association for the Care andResettlement of Offenders, that was one
such voluntary organization. I was paid. I
had a paid job with this organization. But
the peop le who had set up theo r g a n i z a ti o n w e r e vo lu n t e e r s . T h etrustees, the directors of the organization
were doing it in their own time because
they thought it was work that needed to
be done. So I just want to say that is thecontext in which I talk about community
involve ment b ecause I think, in the
United Kingdom, we have a goodtradition of volunteering.
There was an a rticle in the Japan
Times newspaper on Saturday about
volunteering in Japan and how this was
beginning to increase, particularly after
the earthquake in Kobe 5 or 6 years ago
when a lot of people gave up their timeand ef f o rt to g o and he lp with th at
disaster. And since then, a lot of privatecompanies allow employees to do somemonths volunteering work of one kind or
another. Now they, in this article, it said
that in Japan, 25% of people say that they
have done some voluntary work in theprevious year. In the United States, it is50%, in the United Kingdom, about 45%.
I do not think these are very meaningful
figures because there is no clearly-agreed
und e rs t a n din g o f w ha t w e m e a n b y
volunteering. I think that it is importantwhether, in different countries, there is aculture of community involvement or

165

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
whether people say, “Well, it is up to thegovernment to do these things. It is up to
the state or it is up to private companies.”
In England, we call this, I think, the third
sector. So you have the government, youhave private businesses and you have athird sector, which is civil society groups.
M y o w n v ie w i s t h a t t h e y a r e v e r yimportant for a healthy society to have a
h e a lt hy s e cto r in w hi ch p eo p l e c a n
involve themselves in the issues thatinterest them, that they are concerned
about. Obviously, dealing with offenders
is one such issue.
Turning to the specific question of
dealing with offenders, of course, those of
you that know about the history of, forexample, the probation service, will knowthat this started as voluntary work. In
the United States, a shoemaker in Boston
decided one day that it was ridiculousthat people were going off to prison, so hesaid, “I will take somebody home with me
and supervise him, look after him, givehim a place to live. If he does not behave
well, he will go back to the court.” And
the court said, “Okay.” Twenty years
later, in England, a printer took homewith him, an alcoholic offender and said,“I will look after this man and make suret h at h e d o e sn ’ t g e t i nt o tr o u bl e . I fnecessary, he will go back to court.” Thisis the origin of probation as we know it.
So the voluntary involvement,c o m m un ity inv o lve m e n t has a lo ng
history. It was very impressive to meetand hear about the system of voluntaryprobation officers. I think it is one of thevery distinctive things about theJapanese system of criminal justice tohave so many—50,00 I think—voluntaryprobation officers doing this importantwork.
We, in the United Kingdom, do nothave that in quite the same way. But we
do have a lot of interest at the moment in

166

trying to recruit ordinary members of thecommunity to work with offenders, tobefriend them and to try to help them. We
call this system “mentoring” or“coaching.” I think, in its modern form, itbegan in the United States. It isinter esting beca u se a lot of p rivatecompanies in business use mentoring, bywhich they mean junior employees are
given a more senior member of staff wholooks after them, who helps them to get
involved in the organization, tounderstand how things are going and tofurther their career. It is the same ideathat somebody who has more experiencein life is able to help somebody who is
young and vulnerable and so on. So there
is a lot of mentoring going on in the
United Kingdom now.
I want to talk about a programme that
the Youth Justice Board has beenfunding. You’ll remember in the lastlecture , I ta lk ed a b out the ra nge of
projects and programmes that the Youth
Justice Board were funding. One of theseis a set of mentoring projects. The Youth
Justice Board has funded 39 schemes. I
will just say a little bit about what theevaluation of these schemes has shown.
It has been shown that most of theoffenders who get mentors are minor
offenders. They are not the most serious.
This is obviously the case because, if I
was a member of the community, I would
not necessarily want to be a mentor forsomebody who had very violent crimes or
who had a lot of crimes. It is interestingthat 5% of the children who had a mentor,
in fact, had 10 or m ore previous
convictions, which is a lot, which means
tha t they are quite persistent, quite
chronic offenders. Most of the children
were in the age range 13–16. There wereabout, in these 39 schemes, there havebeen about 1400 referrals. 1400 cases
have been sent to the scheme to say,

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS“These are children. We want to findmentors for them.” And just over 1100
mentors have been recruited from thecommunity. There are 565 active cases.
So there are 565 cases going on at them om ent. 167 have bee n com plete dsuccessfully. 175 have broken down, have
not worked out. Now the average timethat is set for a mentoring relationship in
the UK is one year. Usually a mentor will
see a child once a week for a year, period.
S o w h e n I s a w t h es e f ig ur es , I w a s
disappointed at the high numbers ofbreakdowns. But I think, as we have said
before, we are sometimes talking about
difficult young people.
Some of the issues that have arisen
from the evaluation of the mentoring
programme. First of all, recruitment.
What these projects have found is that it
is more difficult to recruit mentors, moredifficult to get community involvement as
mentors in areas where there are richer
people. In the more affluent, in the more
prosperous areas, it is more difficult to
recruit people. This is very interesting
because, later, I will be talking about thereferral order, which is a new order inwhich members of the community areinvited to become involved. There it is theother w ay a round, it is easier to getpeople from the more prosperous areas tobecome involved in the Youth Offender
Panels and less easy to get them involved
in mentoring. I think the reason is thatthe more middle-class, prosperous people,
they like to b e involved in decisionmaking, but they do not like to, actually,
we say in English, “get their hands dirty”
with the actual work. It is easier to maket h e d e c is i o n s t h a n i t i s t o p u t th edecisions into practice.
There are some interesting ideas thatthe projects have used to try to recruit
different people, different marketing
ideas. For example, they p ut

advertisements in local newspapers. They
have put details about the mentoring
sc h e m e in t h e s a la r y s li p s o f l o c a lgovernment employees. So, people whowork for local government, when they get
their money at the end of each month,they get a little slip that says how muchthey have. Also in there is a little thing
saying, “Would you like to be a mentor toa young offender?” So maybe they are in agood mood when they get their money
and they think, “Oh, maybe I will pay
something back to the community.” I
don’t know. There are ta lks given toparticular groups of people targeted, orparticular groups who m ight beinterested—some of these civil society
groups and organizations whose members
might be interested in doing it. There isuse of local radio and local newspapers.
Some of the other issues that havea r i s e n in m e n t o r i n g i n t h e U n i t e d
Kingdom, this question of police checks.
We ha ve, I think, alread y had so me
discussion about the extent to which it isa good idea to use people who perhaps
have been in trouble themselves to workwith young offend ers. The y cansometimes be very good. If they have beena young offender and have put their lives
straight, then they can b e very good
mentors and very good because young
peo ple are m ore like ly to listen to
somebody like them who has been introuble than they are to listen to someone
like me who has never been in trouble.
But, of course, this is a risk—well, I havenot been in serious trouble anyway. There
are risks attached to such programmes.
Of course, you cannot use people whohave ha d o ff enses a ga inst child ren,sexual offenses, these kinds of things. So
you need to check their records with thepolice. And I don’t know what it is like inyour countries. But, in our country, this isa very slow process. So you send somenames off to the police and maybe some167

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
months later they will say, “no” or “yes.”
In the meantime, when they have had
their salary and they have said “Yes, I
w a nt t o b e a m e n to r” a n d t h e y a r einterviewed and then nothing happens
for several months because they are being
checked and checked and some of themlose interest. They go and do somethingelse. So that is a small practical question.
But for community members, if you want
to involve them, you have to think about
it from their point of view. Sometimes thebureaucracy, the systems that we have toh a ve c a n ge t in th e way o f h ow th ecommunity would want to do things, howordinary people—they would not always
understand.
It is a similar question about the rightlevel of supervision and support to offerm e n t o r s . H o w m u c h s h o ul d y o u b e
c h e c k i n g u p o n th e m ? I f y o u a r e a
probation officer on the Youth Offending
Team who are running the programme,
you have your volunteers seeing thesechildren, should you ask them for reports
every week? Every month? Every six
months? Should you arrange meetings forthem? This is a difficult balance because
the people like to be able to do the thingthat the y want to do themselves.
Sometimes they might run into
difficulties. So you need to find a way
which offers them support to do the work
properly, but does not over-intervene andallows them to be members of th ecommunity. This is a theme which I will
return to when I talk about the Youth
Offender Panels. There is a danger, when
you involve the community, that you
want to turn them into professionals
because it is easier to deal withp r o f es sio na ls th a n it is c o m m un ity
p e o p l e . S o yo u t r a i n th e m a n d y o u
support them and you supervise them.
And then, suddenly, they are not reallylike the co mmunity that they aresupposed to be. They have become more

168

like you. They have become an additional
member of the Youth Offending Team. If
it is to work, you actually want them to be
as they normally are. So getting thebalance is very important.
F in a lly , t he r e i s th is q u e st io n o fcontingent mentoring. In the UnitedStates, the research shows that
contingent mentoring is the mosteffective. This means that, if I am amentor for a boy and I say to him, “Okay,
I am going to see you next Saturday and I
will take you swimming. But I will only
take you swimming if you go to school
every day and you do your homework
everyday. I ring up the school on Friday
and they say, ‘Yeah, he has been in schooland he has done his homework,’ then I
will meet you on Saturday and take you
swimming.” So I ring up on the Friday
and they say, “Well you did not come toschool on Thursday” or “He did not do his
homework,” then I have to say, “I’m sorry,
we don’t go swimming.” The idea is thatyou build in the reward of the mentoring
relationship and link it to improved
behavior. I think this is quite difficult inpractice because mentors want tobefriend the young person. They will notalways obey the system of contingent
mentoring. They will not always obey therules because they will want to take theboy swimming on Saturday whether hehas done his homework or not. So there isa question about that. Also, these areboys, mainly, sometimes girls, but boys
who, of course, do not do what they aresupposed to do. So I haven’t looked indetail, but I suspect some of the
breakdowns in the relationships havebeen because of this, contingent
mentoring. The boys have not done what
they were supposed to do so the mentor
says, “Well, what is the point ofcontinuing?” and he finishes. Well, there
is no point in having a perfect contingent
mentoring scheme. But no mentor ever

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
meets any child because they do not dowhat they are supposed to do. They wholesystem then fails. So you have to keep
this in balance.
J ust two mo r e thin gs. T he Yo uth
Justice Board is extending the mentoring
programme in two specific areas wherew e t hin k it is im p o r tan t. On e i s inim p rov ing lite racy and n um era c y—teaching children to read and write andarithmetic and mathematics because thelevel of basic skills among young
offenders is very very low. It is one of theindicators in our country of the likelihoodof being a persistent offender is these arechildren who have not learned to read or
write well. They have a reading age, aread ing level much lowe r than theyshould have. Mentors can help them toimprove those basic skills.
The second area we are extending thisto is with ethnic minorities. I mentionedthat in the United Kingdom there are—not large—but there are, in certain partsof the country, quite large ethnic minority
populations from the Caribbean, fromSouth Asia, from other parts of the world.
And these are youngsters who have notbeen treated very well by the criminal
justice system. There is overrepresentatio n of these groups,
pa rticularly Afro- Caribbean boys inprisons. So there is a lot of interest intrying to develop alternatives to custodyfor these groups. So w e are trying torecruit older people from the minorityc o m m u n it ie s t o a c t a s m e n t o r s f o r
minority youth. That is a big target for
the Youth Justice goal.
I want to mention three other areas ofcommunity involvement in Youth Justice.
The first is what we call “appropriate
adults.” It is probably true in many ofyour countries that young people, when
they are arrested, cannot be questioned

except in the presence of their parents oranother adult. Of course, you try to get
the parent to come. But sometimes they
won’t or they can’t. Many areas now haverecruited panels of people who act as
appropriate adults. Their role is to ensurethat the young person understands what
is going on; and they can intervene. They
can say to the police officer “Hang on aminute. I’m not sure he/she understands
this. I w ant to talk to them.” This isseparate from any legal representation. It
is possible to have legal representation ina p o l ic e s t a t i o n w h e n y o u ’ r e b e i ng
questioned. But it is not a very highpercentage of children who have legal
representation at that stage. They haveto have an adult with them.
The second thing I want to mention arewhat we call, rather confusingly, “Boardsof Visito rs.” And these a re ordina ry
members of the community who visit
prison establishments in order to checkupon the welfare of people in prison andto hear complaints from prisoners. There
are 135 boards of visitors, one for each of
the prison establishments in England andWales. I mentioned last time, there are
13 prison establishments that take thejuvenile. So each of those will have apanel of Boards of Visitors. Each of thepanels has about 15 or 20 people on it.
Some of them are local magistrates. Someof them are just local people. They areappointed by the government. They arecommunity members, but they have toapply because they are given wide accessto the prison establishments. In fact, I
think they are even given keys to be able
to go at any time of the day or night tovisit or check. It is an important, I think,function of the local community to checkupon those people who are detained inthose communities. Because, although
they are in prison, they are in custody,
they are detained, they are still citizens.
Their rights have not been taken away. It

169

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
is important that there is a mechanism, ameans in the local community forensuring that they are treated carefully
and properly. There has recently been areport by the government on the roles ofBoards of Visitors. The recommendationis that the name is changed to something
like Independent Monitoring Panel tomake sure the role of monitoring theconditions and monitoring how people aret r e a te d i n t he se e s t a b li s hm e n t s is
p r op e rly c om m un ica te d . “B o a rd s o f
V is it o r s” so u n d s li k e th e y a r e j u st
visiting, “Hi. How you doing?” and they goaway. But it is stronger than that. It is
confusing because we separately havesomething called “prison visitors” who are
ordinary people who simply go in andthey are simply befriending prisoners
who have perhaps not got families. And
perhaps they bring them food or theycome and talk to them. That is different.
Boards of Visitors are a more formal partof the arrangement.
Fina lly, the re ar e sim ila r k ind o fvisitors f or police sta tions. We haveordinary members of the community whogo and can visit police stations to checkthat people who are detained in police
stations are not being badly treated. This
does not just apply to juveniles. This is forthe whole age range. But I mention that
because I used to be, many years ago, I
was a lay visitor to police stations. So I
used to visit the local police stations tocheck that people were being detained inaccordance with the rules.
So those are the main current ways inwhich the community can becom e
involved in youth justice in the United
Kingdom, I think. I want to turn now to
the new development, the new sentencethat is currently being tried out in 11
a re a s o f E ngla nd a nd Wa l e s , c al l e dreferral orders. We have borrowed quiteheavily from the New Zealand system of170

Family Group Conferencing in developing
this new system. We have also borrowed
from the system in Scotland, which is in
the north part of the United Kingdom
which, as I had explained, has a separate
jurisd ictio n, a se pa r ate s et of le gal
systems and they have a more informal
way of dealing with young offenders. So
we have created a hybrid system, a new
system called referral orders. It will work
like this. It will be an order that is madeby the youth court. It will be mandatory,
it will be automatic for cases where young
people have no previous conviction. So it
is their first appearance, the first timethat they are guilty in the youth court.
They have to plead guilty. There areth r e e e x ce p ti o n s to th i s a u to m a t ic
referral order.
First of all, if there is an absolutedischarge given—which means that it issuch a minor thing it is really a technicalbreach and nothing at all happens. Or it
is so serious that the young person has to
immediately go to custodial detention.
Or, if the young person has a mental
health problem and they can be given a
hospital order to be detained in hospital,
that very rarely happens. But other thanthose exceptions, the referral order willbe the sentence that is made. It lasts
between 3 and 12 months. When the
court makes the order, it decides how
long the order should last, reallydepending on how serious the offense is.
That is the main consideration. So themore serious ones, 12 months. The lessserious ones, 3 months. But it isimportant to note that it is only for people
who plead guilty. So, if you are appearing
in the youth court and you say “I didn’t doit” and there is a trial and you are foundguilty, you cannot then go down thisreferral order road. The reason is that we
think it is important that the young
person, from the beginning, accepts thatthe y ha ve do ne the crim e. S o it is a

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
slightly different emphasis from New
Zealand where, I think, young people cango back into the Family Group
Conference when they have been foundguilty, even though they were saying
before that they hadn’t done it. In oursystem, you have to say “guilty” from theword “go,” from the start.
What the referral order means is thatyo u a r e re q ui r ed t o a t t en d a Y o uth
Offender Panel. So we have created a newtier of decision-making, a new kind of
way of determining, a way of deciding
how to deal with these young offenders.
So the court hands over the case to thisnew thing, the Youth Offender Panel.
And, rather confusingly, we call this in
shorthand, the YOP. So we already havethe YOT, the Youth Offending Team. And
now we have a YOP, the Youth Offending
Panel. So it is very confusing foreverybody. It is particularly confusing
because it is the responsibility of the YOT
to set up the YOP. So the Youth
Offe nding Team is re spo nsible fo rorganizing the Youth Offender Panel.
They are responsible for recruiting thecommunity members who are going to beon it. They are responsible for organizing
the meetings, for training the members,
for sending out information, for arranging
it. If this was a Family Group Conference,
this would be for the Youth Offending
Team to do.
Perhaps the most important distinction
with the Family Group Conferences isthat the comm unity members areperhaps the most important and new partof this system. The idea is that there will
be in each Youth Offender Panel two
members of the local community, twoordinary people, one of whom is the chair.
So the Youth Offender Panel meeting ischaired by an ordinary member of thecommunity. There has to be one othermember of the community there. The idea

is t h a t t h e Y o u t h O f f e n d i n g T e a m
recruits a pool, a group of community
representatives to act as panel members.
The idea is to recruit a broad range of
people. There is a minimum age of 18 tobe a panel m emb er. B ut we do wa nt
young people. We do want some people
who are 19, 20, 21, 22. We don’t just wantcommunity elders. We want people whoare closer in age to the young people they
are dealing with because we think thatthe young people may take more notice ofsomeone closer. Now this is an important
cultural question w hich va ries fromcountry to country: how much respect andhow much people take account of older
people. I’m afraid, in our country, a lot of
young people do not take much notice ofwhat older people say or are perhaps
more influenced by people closer to them.
Tha t i s a genera lizat io n. I a m not asociologist. But I think it is perhaps animportant difference with some systems.
I think there is a minimum age for beinga voluntary probation officer in Japan
which, no? But most of the voluntaryprobation officers are somewhat older, I
think, than probably mentors orcommunity panel members would be in
the UK. So they can be as young as 18.
We have said that if you have had aprevious minor offense, that will not be abarrier to being a member of the Youth
Offender Panel. I was involved in a groupwhich was developing a guidance for how
we recruit the community members. I
remember I had a big argument with apolice officer who wanted to say that
nobody with any criminal offenses should
be involved in this and I said I thought it
was important. I managed to win a little
victory. So a previous minor offense does
not act as a barrier.
Really, w hat w e a re looking for incommunity members are personalqualities to bring to this work. We want

171

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
people who are interested in questions ofcitizenship and questions of how young
people develop. We want people who areon the w ho le now, of good cha ra cteralthough they may have had some trouble
in the past. We want people who cancommunicate well, who can understandwell and make good judgements. We wantpeople who have a good temperament,
who are not going to lose their temper or
shout or anything like that. We wantpeople who are reliable and who will
make the commitment because the kindof commitment we are talking about ismaybe 2 or 3 hours a week for 40 weeks ay ea r. Tha t is t he ex pec tation of acommunity panel member. So it is quite aheavy commitment to do one or two casesa week 40 weeks of the year. You have to
be clear that you’re going to be available.
If you have a lot of other commitments,
you may not be able to do that.
So the community members are thekey part of the Youth Offender Panel.
O b v io u sl y, a s in th e F a m i ly G r o u p
Conference, the young person and theirparents have to be there. The victim has
to be invited to the panel meeting and, as
in New Zealand, the young offender andthe victim can bring a supporter witht he m . O n e o f th e in t e re s ti ng o th e rdifference, I think with the New Zealandscheme, is that there are no lawyers in
the Youth Offender Panel. That is nottechnically true. If the young offender’sfather happens to be a lawyer, then he isallowed to come. Or you could perhaps
bring a lawyer as a supporter, but that is
discouraged, really. Because the idea isthat we w ant direct participation bypeople. Be do not want people to speak
through representatives. And there is ab it of an argument in the UK at the
moment because the United Kingdom has
signed something called the European
Convention on Human Rights, which is ab ig huma n rights convention w hich,172

amongst other things, gives a right tolegal representation in judicial
proceedings. So you have a right to dothat. But the youth justice board and thegovernment are arguing that these are
not judicial proceedings. The judicial
proceedings is the court that has madethe referral order. The Youth Offender
Panel meeting is part of the execution of
the sentence. It is not proceedings. But
there are some people who are arguingthat question. So maybe there will be acase to decide this. In a way, if lawyers
are allowed into it, it rather defeats theobject of having this new panel systemb e ca u se it is sup p o se d to b e a ve r ydifferent kind of way of dealing withthings.
Finally, the idea is that the Youth
Offender Panel should be held within 15
working days of the referral order having
been made, which is a very demanding
target—very tight, given the importanceof the preparation and everything. You’ll
re member I talked about the
governm ent ’s emphasis on speed,
speeding cases through the system. So
they did not want to introduce a newmeasure which brought back delay. Thisidea that the cases are dealt with quickly
is still important. So they have set thistarget, the expectation is 15 days.
So the aim of the Youth Offender Panelis to agree a contract. I will not talk indetail about how the panel works. But insome respects it is similar to the FamilyGroup Conference methodology. The idea
is that, at the end of the meeting, there isa contract that is signed by the young
person and the chair of the Youth
Offender Panel. That contract shouldhave 2 elements. One is, how is the young
offender going to make reparation forwhat they have done? How are they goingto pa y b a ck either the victim o r thecommunity for the wrong they have done?

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
The second element is what are we goingto do to stop the youngster committing
the crime in the future? What sorts ofmeasures are going to be taken? So thecontract might say that the young person
w ill do a certain number of hours of
unpaid work in the community,community-service kind of placement,
plus they will attend specia l cla sses
d esigne d to he lp the m lea rn how tocontrol their temper or about helping
them to reduce and give up drinking
alcohol or to help them with some otheraspect of their offending to improve theirattendance at school, sessions with theirparents to improve relationships at home,a w h o l e r a n g e o f d if f e r e n t s o r ts o fmeasures to try to deal with the problems
that underlie the offending.
Again, I think, two differences from the
New Zealand model is that there will be
two more meetings of the Youth Offender
Panel. There will be a review meeting tosee how this is going. This is a contract.
So, you signed the contract so you have to
do it. So there is a meeting about half way
through because the contract will specify
by and when this work has to be done.
You will remember that the referral orderhas been set from 3 months up to 12
months. So that provides the length oftime within which the contract has to becompleted. Then at the end, there will bea meeting reconvened to see how things
have been done. If the young person has
not completed the contract, then the casecan go back to court, and the court cansentence the m a s though it w a s the
beginning of the process again. So in away, it is all on the young person to dowhat has been agreed. If they do complete
the contract, then they do not have acriminal record. Their criminal record ista ken fro m the b oo ks. S o that is a n
incentive for the young person to do this,so that they will not get a criminal record.
It is possible for the young person to ask

for a Youth Offender Panel to meet again
if they want to change the contract. If
they, after a while think that it is unfair
or they don’t think that it is right or theircircumstances—their parents are moving
house or there is something going on—
and it is possible to vary the terms of thecontract with another meeting.
In term s of a mode l, the Youth
Offender Panel is within a kind of shell of
the referral order. There is always thethreat of going back to the court to deal
with the case if the thing doesn’t workout. A nd I think that is beca use, in
Britain, we are a bit nervous of how thiswill work. This is a new kind of system
for us. I personally hope it works very
well because I think it is really good.
There are some people who are a little
skeptical, they do not think it will workand they think that the traditional court
system is better. So we are going
carefully to see whether it works.
Okay, I’ll just quickly say something
about the rationale—why, specifically, in
Britain we have introduced this. In away, the reasons for introducing this are
similar to the reasons in New Zealand.
But I think there are some particularissues in Britain. Part of it is about giving
victims more of a say, giving victims theright to have an explanation, to have an
apology, to have restitution or reparation.
Part of it is about getting an offender tobe able to take responsibility, but also tohave a chance to give their input, tocontribute their ideas. Part of it is for thecommunity to express their concerns andto engage with the problems. So I think,in Britain, we think of the youth justicesystem as having three components, likea triangle—the offender, the victim andthe comm unity. T hese a re the three
in t e r e s ts t h a t n e e d t o b e s a t i s f i e dproperly in a system of juvenile justice.

173

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
Now, in principle, some people say theordinary youth court should be doingthese things. We are about to introduce,in Britain, a system for giving victims theop portunity to make a statem ent
through—or at least have their views
about the impact of the crime given to a
court. So there is a way, in the normal
courts, for some victim impact
information to get into decision making.
If you go to a youth court, the magistrates
will ask the young offender what they
think. They will normally just grunt.
They will normally not say anything. But
there is, in principle, the mechanism, theway for the young offender to contribute
their thoughts. As I m entioned,m agistrates are members of thecommunity. S o some people will say,“Well, we already have a system whichm eets the needs of the offender, thevictim and the community well.” But
when you look at the system of the youth
courts closely, you will see that it does notwork in that way. What specifically the
Youth Offender Panels are providing is asystem that is much more direct. You willremember that I talked about one of thegovernment white papers was called “NoMore Excuses,” that the old philosophy
was that we were always making excuses
for young offenders. Before the Labour
government came into power, the Home
Secretary, the minister in charge of all
this went to sit in a youth court to watch
what was going on. He did not like what
he saw because the young person was
sitting there and the lawyers were doing
all of the talking, the professionals. The
young person who committed the crime
was simply not engaged, not involved. So
the idea is to make it more direct. The
young person has done the crime, theyshould be more directly involved in theproceedings. In consequence, it should be
more informal to encourage participation
because the reality is we are often talking
about people who have not had the best174

e d uc a tio n, the y a re no t th e b e s t a tspea king. If you put them in a ve ry
formal setting and say “Speak! Tell us
what you think,” they would just find it
too difficult. They cannot do it. So you
need to create an informal setting. You
need to have a dynamic setting. By that I
mean a kind of forum in which fresh ideas
emerge during the proceedings in how todeal with this problem. It isn’t often in
the court, the social worker or probation
officer had written a report saying, “Thisis what we think should happen to thisyoung person.” It is all agreed and it is, as
we say in England, a stitch up. It is all
kind of agreed by the professionals andthen everybody goes off. The idea here isthat the actual meeting of the Youth
Offender Panel could create some newideas that had not been thought of before
for how to deal with this.
The idea is that a young person is more
likely to comply with measures that he/
she has had a part in determining, a partin deciding in a discussion thancomplying with something that has been
imposed from on high by a court. So theYo uth Off end er Panel is not a court
sentencing, it is a panel agreeing. And
this is a very different kind of mode of
decision-making. I think part of that is to
do with the kind of people that we hope
will become community members. I willta lk a fter the b reak a bout the early
research on these Youth Offender Panels.
One of the community panel members
told the researchers, “Magistrates thatlive in big houses in nice areas and are
visualized as being officials, young people
can see that we, the community panel
members are normal and live in the same
areas that they do and experience thesame problems.” Well, I will tell you that
picture is not entirely true because theevidence is that a lot of the community
panel members are still middle class,more prosperous, affluent people. But the118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
idea, and this is an idea that we arestruggling with, is to try and make itdecision-making by people who are moresimilar to the offenders. I think that is an
important distinction. So those are thefour key items I think in our context, in
Britain, more direct, more informal, mored yna m ic and mo re p rob le m- so lving.
Those are differences from the youth
court system which the panel will replace.
I mentioned that we are testing pilot
schemes in eleven areas of England andWales. The pilot started last summer.
There has been one evaluation report
produced earlier this year. The plan isthat the referral order and youth offenderpa nels will be introd uced across thecountry from next April. So April 2002
will be the national implementation, thenational rolling-out of the programme. So
already all of the areas in preparation fornext April are beginning to think about
the questions of recruiting the membersof the community and so on.
So what is the early experience of thesepilot schemes? Well, first of all, on thisquestionofrecruitment
andrepresentation of the panel members, theevaluation has found that, because there
was a big rush to get enough community
members ready, they have not worried somuch about whether the panel members
are representative of the community.
Ideally, you would have people who wererepresenting the bigger community. But,in practice, they have been so worried
that the y would not have enoughcommunity members to run the panels,
they have not worried so much about thequality, the representative nature of thepeople. As I said, there has been moredifficulty in recruiting people from poorer
backgrounds. Most of the community
panel members are women rather thanmen. I will come back to talk about someissues, at the end, to do with this.

Second thing is that a training
programm e for com munity panel
members was developed by the Youth
Justice Board. We asked a university to
produce a training manual for community
members. And it was for the local Youth
Offending Teams to do the training of thecommunity members. The training is sixdays, which has taken place at weekends.
S o o v e r s i x w e e k s , t h e c o m m u n i ty
members came to a training course. Thatis quite a lot of training, I think. Somepeople say it’s too much. This question ofwhether we are too w orried abou t
com munity m embers just being
themselves, so we want to train them into
little professionals. In the pilot schemes,
the training course is also acted as theway of selecting out people who are notsuitable. The system will be different
when the programme is national because
there will be a process of interviewing thepeople who want to becom e panel
members, to see if people are suitable.
But, in the pilot areas, because time wasshort, people were invited to come on the
training. And if, during the training
co urs e , t he y b eh a ve d i n a w a y t h a t
su g g e s t e d t h a t t h e y w e r e n o t v e r ysuitable, then is w as suggested tha tperhaps they should do something elsewith their volunteering. Their community
involvement could be some other kind ofactivity, but not with young offenders.
One of the problems with the training has
been that it has raised expectations of thecommunity members, which have notalways been fulfilled in practice. So there
are two specific issues that I will talka b o u t l a t e r . O n e a b o u t th e k i n d o f
information that is made available tothem in the meetings, and the second isabout the attendance of victims.
It is interesting, the researchers ask
th e c o m m u n it y m e m b e r s w h y t h e ywanted to do this because it is quite a big
commitment to give up 2–3 hours a week

175

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
for 40 weeks a year. Some of thecommunity members said it was theirown experiences as a young person. They
had not necessarily been in trouble, but
perhaps they had some difficult times asa teenager and they wanted to try andhelp. Some people said they were worried
about the crime problem in their area andthey wanted to do something about it.
Some people said it was related to a jobthat they had previously done. Perhaps
they had previously been a probation
officer. Some people said it was a way ofgetting some experience because it mightallow them to do a job in the future in thiskind of area. So those were the main kindof motivations, the main reasons why
people wanted to do this.
The positives of what the community
panel members said were that they did
feel that it was important work that they
were doing. One or two of them said that
it was the most important thing that they
had ever done in their lives and they werevery excited by it. They felt that they
were valued and that they were wellsupported by the Youth Offending Team.
In the panel meetings, they were on thewhole impressed by the contributions
that the parents had made in thesessions. I think they had expected theparents to maybe be a problem. But theyh a d b e e n v e r y im p r e sse d w it h h o w
concerned the parents had been and thekind of care that the parents on the whole
were taking of the young people.
The disappointments—this question
about information. The evaluators foundthat they were disappointed about thelevel of information they got before thepanel meeting. And I want to come backto this question in a minute because I
think it is quite important when we’retalking about community involvement,
how much information they should haveabout the individuals. They were176

disappointed that the number of victims
was small. And they were disappointed
that the kind of things that they could
put in the contract, the kind of activities,
the kind of programmes were a smaller
number than they wanted. They weredisappointed at the range of programmes
and the breadth of programmes. So theywould be in the panel meeting and theywould talk to the young p erson andmaybe the victim and the parents. And
they would think, “What this boy (or girl)needs is a programme which would help
them find work on a Saturday morning”
or “improve their skills in this way” or“will occupy them after school on
Tuesdays” or “will get them involved insoccer because they are very interested inthat.” They were disappointed that there
weren’t these things there. They could
say “This is what w e want,” and theYouth Offending Team would say, “Well,
I’m sorry, we do not have the ability to do
all of these things.” S om etimes theym ig h t se e t h a t t he r e w a s a sp e c ia l
problem, that they needed a course on
drugs to help them become more aware
ab out drugs or to have som e specia ltreatment. These programmes aren’t
there. I think that was an overwhelming
finding, that the community members
were disappointed in that.
Now, from my point of view, I thinkthat it is important to try to turn thatdisappointment into action because it is
no good the community members justsaying “Oh, there are not enoughfacilities. There are not enough activities.
There are not enough things for theseyoung people to do.” They must try to
exercise influence to increa se thosethin gs— whether th at is in flu en ce
through their personal efforts or theirpersonal contacts (through their families
or f riends) or whe the r it is thro ughlobbying politicians to spend more moneyon th es e areas or asking for more

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
resources or more programmes. But it
w ould b e no good if you just had thecommunity members sittin g th ere
complaining, “Oh there is not enoughthings for young people in the area.” In away, that is what the youth court
magistrates already do. They make thosecomplaints. But the idea of having thecommunity members is to engage them inthe problem and to say, “This is yourresp onsibility as m embers of thecommunity, as representatives of thecommunity, these young people who arecommitting offenses, we need to sort thatout as a community. So we need to belooking at ways to improve the range ofthings. So, hopefully, it will create a kindof dynamic, a process in which there isgreater investment, a greater number ofthings available for young people to do.
So the early evidence from about 300
panels, less than half were managed to beheld within the 15 days of the referral
order being made, which is not
surprising, I think. This is a new system
and I think 15 days is too short to do all
the preparation that is required to run agood panel. Two-thirds took place after
5pm. I put that statistic down because itshows that there is some flexibility about
the timing of these meetings. The idea, if
you are going to involve the community inany kinds of activities, you have to takeaccount of the demands. It is no good if
the Youth Offending Team likes to havethe meeting at 10 o’clock in the morning.
People have jobs. So a lot of the meetings
are in the evenings. Some at theweekend. I think, if you are going to
involve ordinary people, you have to takeaccount of ordinary people’s lives. And
that is the reality. Half last more than 40
minutes. And some of them may last 2 or
3 hours. They don’t last as long as the
New Zealand conferences on the whole.
Some of them only last half an hour. We
are talking here about 1st time offenders,so there may be a theft from a shop or
something like this. So it is the first timesomeone has stolen a shirt or something
like this. There is not necessarily a lot to
do in that kind of case. So some of themare quite short. Some of them which are
more complicated obviously last longer.
The most w orrying, from my point ofview, statistic is that victims attend in
only 10% of cases. So in about 30 or sopanels out of these 300, victims came,which is very low. Much too low. I havebe en a sking f or so me m ore de ta iledresearch on why it is that the victims
have not wanted to come. I have alreadytalked about the question of speed andthe importance attached to doing things
quickly. But, as you will see, as I said,
only half of the panels were held within
15 days. So it is not simply a question of
speed. I think it is a question of skill.
There is not the skill yet in our country to
be able to talk to victims in a way which
encourages them to become involved
with out pre ssuring them to be com e
involved. It is very important, of course,
not to put pressure on a victim. “Youmust come to this panel. It is your duty tocome to this panel.” That is wrong. Thatwould be wrong. They have not done
anything wrong themselves. They havebeen the victims at this point. But, if you
just say, “Well we got this project. Come if
you want,” they’ll say, “No, I don’t think I
will.” So you have to find a way of, I
think, interviewing and talking to themso that they will think, “Y es, this issomething that I could get something out
of. And maybe it is a part of myresponsibility as a community member. I
don’t really want to do it, but I think...”A t the m o m en t, we d o no t hav e theexperience or skills to do that very well.
And we are trying to build that up andtrying to identify what training is neededin this whole question of dealing withvictims in a way which encourages themto get involved in restorative processes.

177

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
What is good news is that contracts areagreed in almost all cases. So in 99% ofcases, the contract is agreed in the panel
meeting, which is good.
I want to just end by talking aboutsome of the emerging issues, some ofwhich are specific to this question ofYouth Offender Panels, but some of theseissues have a broader importance when
you are talking about involving
communities in Youth Justice or indeed
Criminal Justice. The first question is a
specific one and it is one that has come up
in the conference and training already. It
is this question of what we call
“proportionality.” As I said, there is not alawyer in the Youth Offender Panel. Oneof the functions of the lawyer in the New
Zealand conference is to ensure that thecon tract or th e agreement in New
Zealand is proportional, is fair, is not too
heavy in terms of the young person but is
not too light in terms of what they havedo ne. So, in N ew Zealand, as I
u n d e rs ta n d it , t ha t f u nc ti o n is th e
f unctio n of the la w yer or the Y outh
Advocate. So they can say “Hang on aminute, this is too much.” We don’t havethat. All we have as a safeguard is thefact that it is an agreement. So, if theyoung person doesn’t like it, they don’t
have to sign it. They can say, “No I would
p re fer to go to court.” Because if anagreement is not reached and a contract
is not signed, then the case goes back to
the youth court. And the young person
might say, “I don’t like to have to do all
this work, I would prefer to go to theyouth court.” And if they went back to theyouth court, they may just get a fine.
They may get a small sentence effectively
than what comes out of the panel. The
fact is that 9 9% of cases do end in acontract being signed. Some people may
say, “well, there is pressure put on theyoung person in these.” What you aret a l k in g a b o u t, a nd I ha ve h e a rd o f178children’s rights lawyer talk about thisand say “this is a terrible system because
you have one child and you have a room
full of adults. And there is nobody there
for that child.” You cannot rely on theparent to be there for that child because
sometimes the parent is the most criticalof the child of everybody. So this is notfair to the child. Now, one of thepossibilities would be to change to system
to produce some kind of safeguard. In
Scotland, where they have a similar kindof system, they do have somebody called a“sa f e gua rd e r” w h o sa f e gua r ds, w ho
protects the rights of the child. But, at the
moment, we don’t have that. So that is an
issue that has come up.
There’s also another side to this. I
mentioned that the referral order itself
can be for as short as 3 months and aslong as 12 months. But that is not a very
wide range because these are dealing
with all cases of 1st time offenders, 1sttime court appearances. Now that could
be riding a bicycle without lights, it could
be very minor offense like this. Or it could
be a very serious offense. Now, in themost serious, the court can send theperson to custody, to detention. But, on
the whole, youth court does not like tosend, particularly 1st time, offenders todetention. So we have a wide range ofoffenses but not such a wide range ofpenalties. So 3 months to 12 months is
not a huge range. So there is then thequestion, “Should the contract of theYouth Offender Panel be related to theseriousness of the crime?” Well, you
would think that is—possibly that shouldbe. But the law says the contract is about
two things. It is about making reparationand you could say “Well, the more serious
the crime, the greater the reparationnee d s to be. ” So , ye s, ther e is som e
proportionality there. But it is also about
preventing offending. What is needed toprevent this yo ung person from

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
committing a crime again? Sometimes
that would be related to the seriousnessof the crime. But sometimes not. It is adifferent question of what you need to do
to prevent the person. Now the difficultywith all this proportionality is if panelss tar t to ge t in to th es e d isc us sio ns ,somebody says, “Ah, I know what we needto help us with this! We need a lawyer inhere to help us decide these difficult
questions about proportionality.”
Lawyers are the people we don’t want in
the panels because we want the direct
participation. So this is emerging as an
issue in the panels—how much should
the community members, the chair of thepanel be concerned about this question of
proportionality. or should they say “Wellthe proportionality question has been
dealt with by the court. The court has
said 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12months. So now we forget aboutp r op o rt io na lity . W e c o nc en tra t e o nrepairing the harm preventing
offending.” That is my view. But there areother people who have different kinds ofviews in this. So this is an emerging
issue.
The second specific issue is this victim
attendance question. And I talked about
this alr ead y. We d o ne ed to ge t th enumbers higher. There w ill be som eoffenses for which there is no real victim.
And one of the questions that is
important in restora tive justice andimportant in the whole victim-offenderarea is what to do when the victim is a
shop or an organization rather than an
individual person. And in these cases, inmy country we are talking about quite a
lot of cases where people have stolent h in g s f r o m s h o p s. T h a t i s q ui t e acommon offense by young people. We callit “shoplifting” or “shop theft.” Now, say aboy has gone into Marks & Spencer’s,
which is an English shop, and taken ashirt—well, he probably wouldn’t go toMarks & Spencer’s. This is a Marks &Spencer’s shirt. He wouldn’t want to wear
a shirt like this. But he goes to a T-shirt
shop and takes a T-shirt with “Adidas,”that would be more like it, something likethi s, a n d he is c a ug ht a n d a Y o uth
Offender panel is arranged, who comes as
the victim? Well, it is difficult to findsomebody from the shop w ho will be
prepared to come because they have ashop to run and it is not important forthem. They have not really been thevictim. Okay, they have lost a shirt. Okay
the profits of the company will come down
a little bit because of the loss of a shirt.
But it is not real individual harm or loss
to an individual person. Now, if someone
from the shop comes, the security guardor the manager of the shop, what do they
say? Do they say, “The profits of my shop
have gone down because of your crime?”
Because the boy will then say, “I don’t
really care about the profits of your shop.
So what?” And I think there is a realissue about whether restorative justicevictim attendance works when you have a
corporate victim. It works much better
when there is an individual w ho has
rea lly suf fered som ething. Then thewhole philosophy comes into play. It isonly my view that it can be a bit false to
try and get somebody to feel shame andsorrow because of the effect on a security
guard in a shop or the manager. So you
understand the p oint I a m trying to
make. So I am more concerned about
victim attendance in the case ofindividual harm. That is, I think, where
we should try to concentrate our efforts.
We should not w orry so m uch if theattendance for these cases of the shops or
offices is low.
Final emerging issue, specific issue isabout the impact on custodial sentencing.
You’ll remember that I said the youth
cou rt, in a s eriou s ca se, can s en d
somebody s traig ht t o det en tion if

179

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
somebody has probably done a serious
burglary, broken into somebody’s houseor set fire to something or hurt somebody
seriously, they would probably go into
custody immediately. The problem is thatthe court, in making that decision, only
really has two choices. It has referral
order or detention. The court has nocontrol over the Youth Offender Panel.
The Youth Offender Panel decides whatis the contract. So they may not trust that
the Youth Offender Panel will come up
with a contract that is sufficient to markthe seriousness of the crime. If someone
has already had a crime, they cannot go
to the referral order. They just get dealt
with by the youth court. But then the
youth court has available a whole rangeof sentences that I talked about before:
supervision orders and probation orders,attendance sentences. But, strangely, for
1st offenders, there are just 2 things,
really. That means that young people
may be more likely to go to prison andthese places when the referral ordercomes in than they are now. So thatmight be a slight problem for the system.
It has not been anticipated, but people
suddenly realized, after this system wasintroduce d, that this wa s one of theconsequences that might occur. So weneed to watch carefully whether that isthe case.
Okay, so what are the final emerging
issues? Well, I talked about this questionof how representative the panels are. Oneof the panel mem bers told theresearchers, “We are basically middlec la s s p a n e l m e m b e r s d e a l in g w i t hworking class communities.” So “we arebasically prosperous people dealing withpoor people.” Now, the idea of the youth
offender panel is that it should not be like
that, that we should be recruiting people
from all over society to deal withoffenders. How we do that is one of the
big challenges for us. And I think it is180

partly this question of maybe 6 days
tra ining for panel mem bers puts off
certain people who don’t want to give up 6
Saturdays to go and learn to be a panel
member. Maybe that is too demanding.
Maybe they have not got the confidence to
put themselves forward for these kinds ofactivities. So I think we need to look at allof that. On this question ofrepresentativeness, this is a questionthat does have wider implications. If you
are talking about comm unity
involvement, you need to consider thiswhole question of whether the people you
are involving properly represent thecommunity. And I’m thinking about men
and women, different minority groups,
different social classes, a whole way inwhich society is made up.
Similarly, the second question that I
raise here links with the YOT (the Youth
Offending Team). One of the community
members said, “I ignore the YOT staff
and I am determined not to be a puppet
on a string.” Some community members
think that they are just there for “window
dressing,” as we say in England. They are
just there to make the thing look a s
though it is participation, but really thedecision is made by the YOT. And some of
the community members are concerned
about that. Another said, “I think that wewill be able to do the panels without the
YOT. In fact, I think it would be easier
without them.” This is the whole questionof, if you do have comm unity
involvement, the relationships with theprofessionals and how that works. Someof the professionals are suspicious of thecommunity members. They do not reallytrust them to do a good job, they are
worried. They see that this is the job thatthey used to do, being taken away andgiven to ordinary people. Some of themth i n k , “ T h a t ’ s n o t r i gh t . I w a n t t ocontinue to do that.” Now I don’t think it
is possible for the Youth Offender Panel118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
to operate without the YOT because theYouth Offending Team is preparing all of
the meetings, it is recruiting & training
the mem bers, it is providing theinformation.
I want say a little about this questionof the information because I think that, ina way, sums up one of the issues between
p rof e ssio na ls a nd the com m unity. I
mentioned before that the youth justiceorders produced this ASSET assessment
tool. When the community members wererece iving their training, they ha d asession about the ASSET tool. And the
YOT said, “Whenever a person commits acrime, we fill in this form and find out allabout their backgrounds and so on.” So
when they came to do the panels, they
expected that they would get this form
about the child, but they don’t. They justget a short summary of the information
about the case. There have been some
practical problems because they did notr e c e i v e t h e p a p e r s lo n g e n o u g h i nadvance to read them. I think a lot ofsystems have these problems. That is not
to worry so much about because we cansort that out. But I think there is a realissue about how much you tell ordinary
people. So say a child has been subject tosexual abuse when they were younger. Is
this information that should go to thecommunity panel members? Of course,
they sign confidentiality agreements, but
still, there are some professionals whoworry about this information getting too
far out. Of course, you would not give thisinformation to all of the participants inthe meeting, the victim. Or should you?
And I think there is a real question now
over wh ere i nformation sh ou ld g obecause, if a victim of a crim e
u n d e rs t a n d s t h a t t h e o f f e n d e r h a s
behaved in the way they behaved because
they have had a very bad experience, thatis not an excuse, but it might help themto understand why they have been a

victim. Is it fair on the child to put all thisin f o r m a t i o n t o p e o p l e w h o a r e n o t
professionally trained and so on? So I
think this whole question of informationand safeguards about information is quite
a difficult professional and mor al
question that needs to be looked at.
The third point is safety. One of thepanel members said to the evaluators, “Itis very nice saying that it is community.
But the reality is that some people canretaliate. So I would prefer to do panels
outside of my immediate community.” Byretaliate, what she meant was that she
was afraid that an offender who she hadseen and dealt with in the panel mightrecognize her in the street and say, “Youare the woman who made me go and do
all this community work and I don’t do it”
and he might take some revenge on her. I
think this is an important factor to take
into account. It is easy sometimes to talkabout the community as though it is a
happy place in which everybody gets onvery well. But there are conflicts and oneneeds to take account of the reality ofcommunity life. It may be that people
who are living very close to the area
where the offenders live may not be thebest peop le to do it. I think if p anel
members are expressing those concerns,
they need to be taken account of. They
need to be listened to.
And finally, there is a q uestion ofextending this system to other offenders.
W i th o u t a n e w l a w , i t h a s t o g o t oParliament. But it could ask Parliament
to agree that the system could be
extended beyond 1st time offenders toother kinds of offenders, maybe someoffenders who have already committed
one crime. So it becomes more like the
New Zealand system, more and more theway in which young offenders are dealt
with. It also allows the government tochange the kinds of offenses. So it might

181

RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 59
sa y that it is not re ally suitab le foroffenses like riding a bicycle without
lights. It is a waste of resources to have ayouth offender panel for a very smallc rime . Le t’ s f in d som e othe r way o fdealing with that. So that the kind of
range of offenders and offenses can bechanged. My view is that, if it starts towork well, and to work well we need more
victims and we need to know how many of
the contracts are properly completed—
and it is too early to know how many ofthese contracts have been completed by
the young offender—but if victims comeand are satisfied and the contracts arecompleted, I think it is potentially a goodmodel to be extended throughout thesystem.
I think that it’s very important tofi ni sh by s aying w hy I think it ’s
important. It is to do with this wholequestion of why we should involve thecommunity. As you know, I am involvedin a project which is about public
attitudes in this area towards offenders
and towards crime. What the evidence, in
my country is, is that, if you ask people
what they think about crime andpunishment, they will say “The system is
not harsh enough. We need a lot morepunishment. Offenders are getting awaywith it.” But, if you give them details of areal case, of a real offender, a real humanbeing who has committed [a crime], when
they start to see the details about thebackgrounds, where they live, the kindsof circumstances in which they have beenbrought up, the pressures on them, they
sta rt to think a nd sa y, “Well ma yb e
punishment is not going to solve thisproblem.” What the Youth Offender Paneld oes is mo ve pe ople f rom ha ving a nemotional reaction about crime—we all
don’t like crime and we must stop it—it is
not an emotional reaction. It is a practicalproblem that they have to solve. They are
representing the community in solving a

182

p ro b lem f or t ha t co m m unity . Wh e npeople are solving problems, there is not
so much room for emotions because it
doesn’t help you solve the problem. I
think the w ho le sys tem o f cr imin a ljustice, particularly for young people,
needs to have that injection of practicalrealism and sense. The Youth Offender
Panel is a model for doing that. If it does
work, it can help to produce a bettersystem for the young people, for thevictims and for the communities where
they live. Thank you very much.