JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORM IN ENGLAND AND WALES
Rob Allen*, **I think the first thing to say is that thereform of the youth justice system has
been a big political priority in my country
over the last 4 or 5 years. I don’t know if
any of you follow politics in the United
K ingdom, but in 1997, we had a new
government of the Labour Party, lead by
Mr. Tony Blair, and this was after a longtime in opposition, and in fact he madehis reputation in part because of his
polices on crime, and he invented a slogan
or a saying, ‘Tough on crime, tough on thec ause s o f crim e’ which su ms up theLabour Party approach. They think that
we should be quite harsh on criminals,
and punish them and so on. But they also
recognize that the roots of criminality andcrime lay in social conditions, in the
depravation, poverty, bad housing and soon. And they are trying to change the way
in which people live, in their lives, tomake it less likely that they would bec rim inals t oo . Th e re was a s p ec if ic
interest in the youth justice system. The
government said, ‘if you look at all thepeople in prison, all of the adults inprison, most of them started to commit
the crimes when they were children.’ So if
w e can make it that this pa rt of thesystem works better, it would be a good, avery good investment because we would
be reducing the number of adultoffenders.
When Tony Blair went to the electionsin 1997, he produced a little card with 5

pledges, 5 things that he said that the
government were going to do. They wereab out red ucing the w aiting tim e forpeople going to hospitals, or reducing thenumber of children in classes, making
class sizes in schools smaller, but one ofthem related to young offenders, it was
about reducing the length of time it takes
for young offenders to be detained withthe yo uth ju stice sys tem , to ha v e ashorter time from arrest to sentence. For
persistent young offenders, and you may
sa y th at it is a st r a ng e th in g f o r apolitical party to say: “We are going to do
this change” it seems like a rather minor
thing, but it shows it has been politicallya very important issue in our country.
And I will say a little bit about why thatis in a minute. What that has meant isthat one of the first pieces of legislation,t h e f i r st l a w s t ha t t he n ew L a b o ur
government brought in to be enacted.
With the Crime and Disorder Act there
is another imp orta nt a ct, the Y outh
Justice and Criminal Evidence Act. They
brought it one year later in 1999 and I
will be talking about that in my third
lecture, because that introduces somevery interesting new ways of dealing with
first tim e of fe nd ers. ..o ff end er s w ho
appear in court for the first time, ways
which borrow heavily from New Zealandand other systems. I will not talk about ittoday as I’m going to concentrate on
measures which for the most part are in
the Crime and Disorder Act.

* 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.

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What the Crime and Disorder Act tries
to do is to put into effect a new
philosophy. And it is a philosophy I
suppose which could be summed up by
the term ‘early intervention’. It is based

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on an idea that we know what makes itlikely that children will become offenders.
We know the kinds of factors: these arechildren who have problems in theirfa milies, these a re children who are
failing at school, these are children who
are at an early age get involved in drugs
or alcohol misuse. These are children who
get involved in gangs at an early age. So,
in principle, if you can do something
about those things, than you will make itless likely that they would continue tooffend. So you need to intervene early, todo things, to try change the way whichyoung people behave. Now I say that
because that philosophy was really incontrast to the old philosophy.
The old system, if it had a philosophy,
w as something like this: “Well m ost
children commit crime—a little bit ofcrime, and most of them as they get older
they grow out of it.” What is more, if they
get involved in the system, that makes
things worse. This philosophy was verymuch influenced by labeling theory, theidea that if negative labels are attachedto somebody, they live up to them. If you
give a dog a bad name then he would
behave badly... that kind of idea. So theold philosophy was very much diversion,
keeping people out of the system.
The new philosophy is to get a bit into
the system. Now I think that might besomething we want to come back to anddiscuss later because I think it is quite animportant question—the generalorienta tion tha t the juvenile justicesystem has. For my own view, the oldsystem was really only saying, ‘don’t put
people in to the criminal system, let’s dothings through social welfare througheducation , through oth er forms ofintervention.’ But the problem is thatthose things will not be done, those
problems as well, those needs were not
m a tc hed thro ugh the socia l welf ar esy st e m . S o it wa s l e f t o p e n f o r th e
criminal system to come and deal with,that is really what is happened in ourcountry I think.
So there is a new philosophy and there
is finally a new infrastructure, and by
infrastructure I mean bodies andorganizations and people to do things
with young offenders. At the local level
there are youth offending teams. So every
area of the country has to have by law ayouth offending team, and the Crime andDisorder Act law sets out who is in ayouth offending team: a police officer, aprevention officer, somebody from the
Health Department, a social worker,
somebody from the Education
Department. Some youth offending teams
have additional people, some have maybe
a youth recreation worker, some havesomebody who knows about housing andaccommodation. But the idea is it is amultidisciplinary,multi-agency
approach. Because it is the only approachthat can tackle the roots of offending
behavior. So there are a hundred andfifty-four, I think, youth offending teams
in England and Wales, and at the center
there is the Youth Justice Board which isfor the first time exercising leadershipover the system. So what we now have ine f f e c t i s a n a tio n a l sy s te m , l o ca lly
delivered, so youth offending teams are
local agencies but they are coordinatedvery much more strongly from the center
than was previously the case.
I want to say a little more about theph ilosophy bec ause th e cr ime anddisorder act introduced a new aim for the
youth justice systems. So in the law the
principal aim for all of the agencies andorganizations in the system is preventing
offending. It is not punishment, it is noteducation, it is not welfare, it ispreventing offending. Now what thatmeans in practice—well, unfortunately

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the position is a bit complicated because
we still have other aims and principles
which are involved in the youth justicesystem. So under quite an old law, there
is still a requirement that the youth court
takes account of the welfare of children
appearing before it, in the whole idea thathaving a separate youth court is based onthat children have special needs, special
welfare needs that need to be taken into
consideration. There is also, a principle ofproportionality. I am not sure how easythat one would be to translate, but theidea that intervention measure sentences
particularly should be in proportion to
the seriousness of the crime. So, in order
to send anybody to prison, a dults orjuveniles, a court must be satisfied thatthe crime or the offence is so serious thatno other penalty will do. And to qualify
for a community sentence, the court has
to be satisfied that the offence is serious
enough.
We basically have in our law 3 kinds ofsentences: custodial or prison sentences,
community sentences, and at the bottom
end-fines and charges which are lessserious. The thing that divides them isthe seriousness of the offence. And there
is a 3rd principle which is growing inimportance in England and Wales, but infact throughout the United Kingdom,which is restorative justice. The
government in the UK talk about thesystem trying to, well having three aims
o f instilling respo nsibility in young
people, restoration paying back to thevictim and reintegration, they call these
the “3 R’s.” We have a joke in English,
this won’t work very well. People talkabout the “3 R’s” ‘Reading’ ‘Writing’ and‘Arithm etic’ well, “writing” and“arithmetic” don’t begin with the letter “r”
so that’s the joke bit. But anyway within
the youth justice system there are these 3
words which begin with “r”;
“ R e s p o n s ib ili ty ” “R e st o r a t io n ” a n d

130“Reintegration” which are all seen to bevery important. The point I want to makeis that each of these principles does not
sit very comfortably with the others. If
you are about “preventing offending”,
only about “preventing offending”, youwill do wh at is needed to prev en t
somebody offending whatever theseriousness of the crime, so say somebody
has done a very minor crime—he hasstolen something from a shop of verysmall value. But when investigations are
made there are all sorts of problems in achild’s home life and he is in a gang or isabout to be, or he is sniffing solvents or
involved in drinking too much. You would
say well, he needs a lot of intervention
because he is in a high risk situation, but
we have the proportionality principle
which says ‘hang on a minute, he onlystole a bag of sweets from the shop’. So
how do you in your system manage to finda response which satisfies the
proportionality requirement andpreventing offending requirement?
If you read the Beijing Rules about theUnited Nation’s Standards Minimum
Rules for Juvenile Offenders they talkabout sentences needing to take accountof the offenders and circumstances of theoffender, but we say in England it begs
the question, ‘which is the more
important of these principals?’. You havethis welf are principle, you haver e s t o r a t iv e j u s t i c e s o i t i s q u i t e acom plicated, m essy picture and in
addition to reducing delay it is not reallya philosophy question but it has almost
been exalted to the level of aphilosophical require ment, thego ve r nm e nt a r e v e ry k e e n tha t t hesystem works quickly, partly because
they had on their card—they will reduce
delay, but they think that speed throughthe system is a very important factor.

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I want to say just a word about thebackground to the changes. In 1996 there
was an important report called “Misspent
Youth” this is a bit of a pun, a bit of a joke
in English because we refer to young
people who behave badly as having a
misspent youth. They have spent their
yo ung yea rs b a dl y. Thi s rep o rt w a sordered and it reviewed spending bygovernment public spending and theirreport was saying that the money whichis spent in the youth justice system wasbeing spent very unwisely, and being
wasted and so on. So the title “Misspent
Youth” was a bit of a joke, obviously not ago od jo ke . B ut th is rep o rt w a s ve ry
r esp o nsib le f o r this q ue stio n—h igh
lighting that question of delays, how longit takes to deal with youngsters in thesystem, it was very critical of the fact thatlots of children went through the criminal
justice system but nothing much wasdone to them. At the end they would get afine or discharge. Nothing was done tochange their behavior, and it was criticalof the fact that nobody knew really what
was hap pe ning in th e you th justic esys tem, that there was very little
measurement of the im pact, ofinterventions on children. And it wasn’t
really a system at all. So this reportwhich was very critical, was a part of thereason that the reform programme wasundertaken.
The second background report that was
important was produced in 1997 by theinspectors at the prisons. In England wehave an independent inspector who visits
all of the prison establishments
throughout the country, at the moment
he is a man who used to be the general in
the arm ed forces. And it is very
interesting that he had never been in a
prison, I think, before he took this job, but
he was very critical of the conditions thath e f ou n d i n m a n y o f th e p ri so ns in
England, and I think his view was that

we do not treat people like this in anarmy, and there are very similar young
men often in prison. Anyway he produced
a report about thejuvenile
esta blishment, that w as very highly
critical and called for major reforms.
The third point isn’t really a point
be ca use I a m a fra i d t o s a y t ha t t he
British government has not really taken
very much account of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child. As
you will know, the country has to submit
reports every 5 years, I think. Last time
the United Kingdom submitted the report
it was criticized by the Commission on
the Rights of the Child, particularly overthe low age of criminal responsibility
which is 10 years old, and the low age at
which courts can send young offenders
into custodial establishments. Well, bothof those things continued to be the case.
T h e go ve r n m e n t ha s no t m a d e a ny
reforms, on account that, I am sad thatth e g o v e r n m e n t w o u ld s a y , th a t i trespects the spirit of the U . N.
Convention, because although the age ofcriminal responsibility is 10, the way inwhich the criminal justice system deals
with y oung c hil dr en is very muchmodifie d from the w ay it dea ls withadults. It is not really the same sort ofsystem at all.
What has been much more importantin terms of the context for change in the
youth justice system has been public andmedia concern about crime. I do not know
if you remember this, but in 1993 there
was a terrible case, in which two 10 year
o ld b o ys m u rd e r e d a sm a ll b a b y inLiverpool, which is a city in the north ofEngland. It was a very shocking crime,and it was one of those ‘how could they dosuch a terrible thing?’. Ever since then, it
has been this way, juvenile crime is often
in the news papers, and it is often said
that there are children out of control, who

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have committed lots of crimes and thesystem needs to get tougher, and what I
am afraid of is that government ministers
listen to that rather than the U. N.
Convention on the Rights of the Child,and that is the political reality in whichthese things work.
The reformed youth justice system has
6 key objectives, and I want to just briefly
s tart by say ing wh y it’s g ot th es eobjectives The first of these questions
spread through the system—why is thatimportant, well, there are number ofreasons for having a long delay between
being arrested and being sentenced. It is
obviously a time of uncertainty for ayoung person, it is a time of uncertainty
perhaps for a victim if there is a trial; andmaybe quite a lot of stress all aroundw hich should be kept at a minimum.
T he re is a r isk o f c ou rse tha t so m echildren will offend before the trial, if
they are not locked up in an institution, if
they are given bail. Then the longer they
are in a period of uncertainty, there aresome children who say ‘well I am going to
be sentenced for this crime anyway’ so I
might as well do a couple more. And it
would be rolled up into one sentence, sothey sometimes go on what we call a“spree,” a number of crimes, because they
think they have nothing to lose. Having along time between being arrested andbeing sentenced, means that for somechildren, they simply have forgotten what
it is that got them into trouble. These
children often, if they are young, maybe
do not go to school, they might not have avery strong sense of time, they live verym u c h in t h e p r e s e n t , t h e y c a n n o t
remember what it was they did 3 or 4 or 5
m o nths a go a nd o b viou sly h av ing a
speedy, a speedy response means thatyou can take action early to try to dosomething about the offending, to try totake some measures quickly that would
keep youngsters out of trouble.

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The second key ob je ctive is a bo ut
getting young offenders to takeresponsibility and by that the idea is thatthe government criticizes the previous
system for being too lenient in the sense
that, they called the white paper, one of
the w hite papers that proceeded thelegislation, “No More Excuses.” They felt
the system was making too many excuses
for children who commit crimes, or it
wasn’t their fault, it was their parent’s
fault, or it was a school’s fault or society’s
fault. So the idea of a new system is that
it is a proper level of responsibility or
accountability. If children do realize what
effect they have on their victim, they areless likely to offend perhaps. And ofcourse society demands increasingly thatchildren do accept some proper level of
responsibility for what they have done.
And there will be those of you who, withyoung offenders, think that a lot of young
offenders try to not take responsibility I
think it was an American sociologist
criminologist Maxwell, who talked about
techniques of “neutralization”. He used
this phrase to describe the way which
offenders, if you talk to them they would
say that “Well that wasn’t my fault, he
was asking for it,” “he had insurance, it
was so and so’s idea, I was just goingalong with him” all of these things will befamiliar to prevention officers and social
workers every day. So the idea is that ap r o p e r l e v e l o f a c c o u n t a b i l i ty a n d
responsibility for young offenders isneeded in the system. Third, the idea of
tackling risk factors, as I had said, lots oflots of research has identified the generalfactors that suggest that somebody will
become an offender, it is true that there
are a lot of youngsters w ho w ill ge t
involved in minor crimes maybe once or
twice, as an experimentation. But I am
talking about factors that predict morechronically p ersistent or serious
delinquency, and those factors are related
as I said to the families, schools and so118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
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on. But obviously the presiding factors
will depend on the individual. So the idea
is that the system should have in place, atthe local level, the resources to be able totackle both individual risk factors foryoung offenders who are coming to thesystem.
The fourth objective is “proportional
punishment.” I mentioned the question of
proportionality, obviously it is importantthat the general public have confidence inthe system, that it does deliver something
in the way of punishment. Research thatthe government has conducted showsthat the youth court was the part of thecriminal justice system that the generalpublic had least confidence in. They were
not happy with the way the youth court
was operated. Now in fact the public are
not very well informed about the facts of
the you th cou rt or a ny o the r c ourts
actually. People tend to underestimate
the severity of the system and part of mywork to try to change public attitudes topunishment is simply to try to get the
public better informed about the facts
and evidence because at the moment wehave a public who is very ignorant in ourcountry, about how the current system
works. But some levels of proportional
punishment are obviously important.
Fifth, reparation. I mentioned thisquestion of getting young people to takeresponsibility. O bviously repa ra tion
provides a prospect of a better deal for thevictim of juvenile crime. Certainly in oursystem, both for adults and juveniles, thevictim has not been a very important
player, until very recently, it has been avery minor consideration. But the ideathat juveniles who commit a crime shouldbe paying back in someway, has become
an i mpor tant th ing , and the final
objective is about reinforcing an dstrengthening parental responsibility,
the responsibility the parents have forth e ch il d re n . A s y o u w il l k no w th e
resea rch shows that poor parenting,p a r e n t s w h o a r e in c o ns i st e n t— o n eminute very strict, the next minute very
rela xed with their children—tend to
produce children who do not really know
when they could behave well, when they
could behave badly. So providing some
guidance, support and also some threat toparents to try and help them to become
more effective parents is an important
objective.
OK , first of the objectives, “Speedthrough the system”. In 1997, the averagetime from arrest to sentence was 142
days, so over 4 and half months, and thegovernment, as I said, wanted to havethat time reduced. That figure is now 83
days, so there has been a lot of progress
made in reducing delay. In fact the vast
majority of cases now are done much
more quickly than not. In our system, themost serious cases can be sent to the
Cr ow n C o urt s o ca ses o f mu rd ering
another, grave crimes, can be transferred
to be done in a more serious adult court,
and those cases can take a very long time.
I mentioned those 2 bo ys who
murdered the baby in Liverpool, they
were tried one year after they had beenarrested. That is exceptional but there
will often be 6 or 7-month delays in those
C ro w n C o ur t ca s e s. W h a t ha s b e enachieved in the Youth Justice Board has
been an important part in achieving thisend to what we call “judgment culture.” If
you had come to Britain 4 or 5 years ago
and sat in the youth court which doesn’tlook unlike this building; Actually, we
could arrange to have this youth court
and you would sit in the back of the youth
court and watch what was going on, you
would no t see a case sentenced, you
would see lot of cases coming through andmagistrates would say we will put it off
for 3 weeks, because either the legal

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representatives, or the social w orker
would say, or the prosecutor would say,‘we are not ready to proceed with thiscase’. So that was a culture of simply
putting off and putting off, andsometimes the prosecutor would say: “Oh,this boy has committed another crime
since then” and we want to deal withthese crimes together, so we will put it off
and put it off. That has changed and now
there is much more emphasis by thepolice, by the crown prosecution service
the independent prosecutors, by the
courts, in terms of getting these cases
dealt with quickly. And what was meantis that priority is given by those agencies
to juvenile cases. You might say, well if
priority is given to juvenile cases thenless priority is given to adult cases. And I
think the government say “yes that isright, because if w e get it right withjuveniles we will be saving ourselvesproblems in the future”.
This emphasis on speed through thesystem has clashed, has been in conflictwith some other priorities andparticularly with “restorative justice” it isdifficult to go quickly. If you want thesystem to involve the victim of the crime,then you need to take time with thevictim. We had an example where, when I
was working for my last organization,“NACRO,” the National Association for
the Care and Resettlement of Offenders,
we were running a programme which
provided reparation orders which is a
new sentence I will talk a little bit aboutlater. One of our workers was asked by
the court when there was an opportunity
for the victim to be involved when theywanted reparation directly, wanted theoffender to do something to them, and theworker said: well I don’t know we hadn’t
had chance to talk to them yet. So thecourt said: ‘Can’t you phone up them now
a nd ask them ’; a nd our worker s aid:
“That is not very good practice to ring up

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and say: ‘Hello, I heard you have been a
victim of a crime. Would you like theoffender to come around and clean up
your garden? Or do something for you?
That is not the right way to do thesethings. And if you do it the victim will say‘no! I want to know more I need time tothink about it’. The result is that thevictims are not involved as much, becauseof the priority a ttached to speed thesystem.
Taking responsibility, that was thesecond of the objectives, but one of thee le m e n t s w a s t ha t t he g o ve r n m e n t
reacted to remove what was the legal
doctrine called doli incapax, which would
be interesting for lawyers but perhaps not
so much for others here. Until 1998, forchildren under the age of 14, I said theage of criminal responsibility is 10 but
until 1998 there was a safe guard, there
was a protection, the prosecution had toprove that the child knew what they were
doing was seriously wrong, before they
could be convicted, because obviously thechild of 10, 11, 12 might not really knowwhat they were doing. But the
government took a rather dim view ofthat, and said well they are old enough toknow what is right and wrong, at the ageof 10, so we will scrub that protection, we
will take away that safe guard. So whenth e U n ite d K ing d o m re p o r ts t o t he
U nite d Na t ion s C om m is sio n o n the
Rights of the Child next year they will
have to say that, I am afraid, we have notrisen the age of criminal responsibility, infact we have removed one of thesaf egua rds w e ha d, in te rms o f do li
incapax. I expect that the United Nations
Commission on the Rights of the Childwill not be very impressed w ith thatparticular change.
More important is a new scheme forreprimands and final warnings, and in
the printed version of the paper there is

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quite a detailed appendix which describes
the reprimand and final warnings
scheme. Before that was introduced we
had a system that was ca lled police
cautioning. The police would give
offenders a caution, which was like a
w a rnin g but that sy ste m w a s n ot a
statutory system. That was just apractice that was grown up by the police,a nd co nse quently the re wa s a lot o finconsistency about how it was done.
There were a lot of stories, whether they
were true or not, about some children
who had 5 or 6 cautions, it was supposed
to be only used once. But there are stories
that there are some young people who
offended and have got cautions and they
offended again, 2 or 3 weeks later andthey got another caution. But in fact
there was only a very small number but
this became one of those things that
happened, the public got the idea that allthese children are being let off. Well infact cautioning—police cautions—reallygrew during that year when I was talking
about when labeling theory was
influential. In fact, 10–15 years ago,people tried to caution a lot of children,
because the aim was to keep them out of
the system. Anyway the current system ismuch more rigid, much more laid down in
the law. So, basically, at first, when you
co m m it a c rim e and if it is a m ino r
offence, say stealing from a shop, which isquite common among children, you arelikely to get a reprimand and that means
you are warned, your parents come to thepolice station, a record is made of that,but no further action is taken. If yourfirst offence is a serious one, you can beprosecuted immediately, and if it is amedium one you can get a final warningi m m e d i a te l y. I f y o u a l r e a d y h a d areprimand, and you committed an
o f f e n c e , th e n y o u c a n h a v e a f in a l
w ar ning a nd tha t is a m os t se rio us
matter because after a final warning you
get no more chances. What happens now

is that in a lot of cases, as well as simply
being warned by police officers, about
your future behavior, you are actuallysent to the youth offending team who
make an assessment of your case. Youma yb e get invo lved in so me k in d o fprogramme, to try to improve the way
you behave. In some parts of the country
we have introduced restorative
conferencing at this stage of the process,so that if you have maybe stolensom e thin g f ro m s om e b od y, st ole n abicycle from somebody, you get a final
war ning. I f yo u a re in a p a rt of thecountry which operates this system ameeting might be called, in which theperson, a victim whose bicycle was stolen
comes, the child comes, the parent comes.
The child says they are sorry and offers to
do something to put that right. And ifthey do that, that is the end of the matter.
In other areas they maybe assess thechil d’s need s, and if he has someproblems, then maybe some effort to dosome work is done to try improve it. So
the final warning is the first stage in thesystem where action is taken to try to
prevent future offending.
What the Crime and Disorder Act also
does is put limits on the youths getting
conditional discharges. This is one of thesentences that is available in the youth
court and basically it means that nothing
will happen to you providing that you
stay out of trouble for the period of thedischarge. So if you get a conditional
discharge, for 1 year, you don’t have to do
anything, all you have to do is stay out oftrouble, if you commit another crime, you
can be sentenced both for the new crimeand for the old crime. So it is a kind ofchance, and the government said, well if
we want these young offenders to takeresp onsibility it does not seem ve ry
sensible to go all the way to the court.
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court can use this. If you have a final
w arning in the previous 2 years you
cannot receive a conditional discharge.
What that means in practice is that you
can receive one of the orders.
An important part of getting young
offenders to take responsibility is throughthe sentences that the youth court can
impose. I thought it might be useful justto say a word about the range ofsentences that are available in youth
courts in England and Wales. When thegovernment reformed the youth justicesystem it did not repeal all the existinglegislation and change it completely. It
just added a new layer on. So, we have a
lot of different sentences, some of which
are very similar to other ones. Somepeople from other countries think that it
is a very strange way to behave.
I mentioned the system in Scotland,
and I just say one thing about that. They
ha ve a trib una l co urt the child re n’s
hearing or children’s panel, which deals
with most cases of juvenile offenders in
Scotland, but they only have one effective
sentence of supervision. They can makethe supe rvisio n re quire me nt on thejuvenile, and they can introduce, within
the box of a supervision requirement,
anything they think needs to be done.
That, I think, is the approach in many
countries.
In England and Wales we havedeveloped all these different kinds ofspecific court orders. The person who
asks the question. “Will the young people
understa nd the system” I think it isunlikely that many young people properly
understand the youth justice system, I
think many of the people who work in it
struggle to understand it, because it isquite complicated, all these range ofoptions. On the left we have discharges, I
mentioned, the conditional discharge,

136

there is a lso the absolute discharge,
which is very rarely used for cases whensomebody is guilty but it is a very, very
minor crime and it is often technical,
technically an offence. Fines, in Englandand Wales parents can be m ader e sp o n si b l e f o r p a y in g th e f in e s o fjuveniles, and in fact in the cases of under
16s, children under 16—parents should
be made liable for paying fines. There arealso things called “bind overs”. Parents
can be bound over to take proper care andcontrol of the child. A bind over is like asuspended fine, you are bound over forsome money, 100 pounds say. If the childbehaves badly you can forfeit or lose thatmoney. There is a compensation ordera va ilab le. Co mp ensa tion ord ers a resupposed to be available throughout thesystem, for juveniles and adults. The
reparation order effectively allowed thecourt to order the juvenile to do unpaid
w o r k , e i th e r f o r t h e b e n e f i t o f t h ecommunity, or for the individual victim of
the crime. We have, for about 30 years,
had the sentence of community service for
adults and young people down to the ageof 16, and in some respects the reparationo rd e r is a k in d of j un io r v e rs io n o fcommunity service, or the possibility of
paying back something to the specificvictim is a distinctive part of reparation
orders.
C omm unity pena ltie s, co mm unity
sentences are sentences for which thecourt has to be satisfied are offences
serious enough to need a sentence likethis and at the top there is a new
sentence, the action plan order, which is a
3 months intensive sentence designed totry and rea lly shake the youngsters
lifestyle, so they change the way they
behave. S o the member of the yo uth
offending team will work very hard for 3
months to try to get to the bottom of why
the youngsters are committing the crime
and to try to do something about it. I

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
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mentioned that there were limits on the
courts’ use of conditional discharges. Up
to 3 or 4 years ago, a large number ofyoung offend ers got conditional
dis ch arges, now they ei th er get a
reparation order or an action plan order.
And many of them, when is it introduced,
will get a referral order. The
government’s idea that we will intervene
earlier and we will do more to change thebehavior, is really enshrined in thesesentences. The other sentences on theright hand column are ones that havebeen available for a while. The Crime andDisorder Act has made some changes tothem. The attendant center, that is asentence that requires juveniles to go on
Saturday afternoon for 2 or 3 hours at atime for a period of up to 36 hours, they
are organized by police officers, And theidea is they get 3 or 4 hours of instruction
and discipline from police officers, there
is a supervision order, and supervisionorder plus requirements, so you can headstraight for a supervision order whichplaces you under the supervision of amember of the youth offending team or
requirements, conditions can be added tothe supervision order. Requirements thatyou refrain, that you do not do certain
things, that you do not go to certain
places, you do not talk to certain people,
they may be conditions that you actually
do certain things, you undertake certain
activities designed to try keep you out oftrouble, whatever that is. Counseling,group work, therapeutic work, sport andleisure activities, the supervision order isa main way in which youth offending
teams construct a programme of
measures to try to meet the needs of theoffender to stop them getting in trouble,
for the more serious offenders.
Three orders only are available for 16
and 17 year olds in the youth court: thecommunity rehabilita tion order, thec o m m u n it y p un i sh m e nt o r d e r , a n d

com munity
punishment
andreh abilitation o rder. Yo u may no t
recognize those terms, I don’t really
recognize them, because, they have only
been the names for orders since April I
think. The community rehabilitation
order used to be known as a prevention
order. T he governm ent decid ed tha t
people did not und erstand what
prevention meant. So they decided to callth e p r e v e n t io n o r d e r a c o m m u n i ty
rehabilitation order, they decided thatpeople did not und erstand what
community service was so they decided tocall it community punishment and there
is one other which used to comb ine,prevention and community service, sothat is now a community punishment andrehabilitation order. The government
were going to change the nameprevention service to community but theydecided not to do that, so we still have
prevention service in England and Wales.
There was a lot of debate about the nameof this service.
I want to take just a minute to say alittle about the prevention service in ourcountry, because obviously it is mostly
important for adult offenders, but they doplay an important part, they are one of
the members of youth offending teams,
and particularly for 16 and 17 year olds.
In the youth court, prevention officers
play an important role. The prevention
service has undergone a lot of changes
over the last 2 or 3 years, it is not just ayo uth ju stic e sys te m th at has be en
reformed , the government has
un de r ta k e n to a rr a ng e q uite m a j orchanges to public services over the last 3–
4 ye a rs , a nd a s s o me w ill kn ow t hegovernment of Tony Blair was reelected acouple weeks ago and he has promised to
do even more to modernize public
services. S o there w ill be even morechanges, but there are 3 main changes tothe prevention service which are worthy

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of perhaps mentioning, the first of whichcalled the modernization programme.
U ntil April, there were about 50
prevention services around the country,
which were in a way independent andlocal. They reported to local communities.
T hat is all change d no w, w e h ave anational prevention service, so there iso ne pe rson w ho is a pp ointe d by thegovernment, who is in charge of the wholeprevention service. So it is like a prison
service, in that respect, so if something
goes wrong maybe somebody who is on
prevention, does some terrible act, theminister can call one person and say:what is going on here? I think that is apart of a desire to have a much morec e n tr a li z e d n a ti o na liz e d se r vi ce t ointroduce more consistent programmes
and so on.
The second change has been a muchgrea ter em phasis on enfo rce ment o forders. Research was under taken, whichshows that of those prevention officers
who were supposed to take offenders backto court if they were not compliant withthe orders, they were not doing as muchas they should, so some offenders were
getting away with not attending and notparticipating, and the government rightly
said it is no good, it is not good for publicconfidence, it is not good for the offenders,so there is much more emphasis now on
enforcement, but I think it is an exampleof the pendulum swinging the other way.
And we may end up with prevention
officers who are more like prevention
officers in the United States, where thejob is really only about enforcement oforders, and they carry guns. The slogan of
one pr evention service, I t hink in
California is, “Surveil them, nail them,jail them”. It means “watch them”, “waituntil they go the wrong way” and then“jail them” so that is not a vision of
prevention service that I particularly look138

for. So I hope that is not the way we aregoing.
The third change of the prevention
service is this— a major emphasis onwhat is called ‘effective practice’. It is
known as the “what works initiative” andthis is base d loo sely on the N or th
American system—mainly research thatshow s that certain programmes withoffenders can produce good results interms of reducing re-offending. This is a
big deal for the prevention service, there
is a lot of money and effort and training
going on. These programmes which arequite psychological, there are lot more
psychologists in the prevention service—
if you want to get on in the UK in thecriminal justice system become a
psychologist at the moment. For my taste
these programmes are too psychological,
they are about trying to change the way
offenders think and behave. And theysometimes do not take enough account of
the environment in which offenders areliving. So yo u ca n h ave a ve ry go od
scheme for teaching an offender, theconsequences of their actions and to knowwhat is the right thing to do and what is
the wrong thing to do. But if thatyoungster has no proper place to live, issleeping on the floor of a friend’s house,has no income, is being offered drugs,
then those programmes are not going towork. So you need to make sure that you
are attacking the problem in a whole way.
But I think the idea of doing effective
things, rather than doing the ineffective
is a very good idea.
One of the other ways in which thechanges are trying to tackle the questionof responsibility is by a new custodial
sentence. It is called the Detention andTraining Order. It can last between 4months and 24 months on the whole andthe id e a i s t hat it is se r ve d h a lf i n
detention and half under supervision in

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
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the community. A lot of sentences forjuveniles and adults have had elements ofsupervision after release, but I have tosay in practice this has always been thepart of the system that has been very
weakly implemented, when somebody
comes out of prison, they don’t get a lot ofsupervision or help. Another problem inour country was that, people who work incustodial establishments, such as prison
officers or social workers were on a reallyvery different track from people who
worked in the community. Often theywould be working with the same young
people, there was very little in the way of
joint work or planning. The idea of theDetention and Training Order is that it isa similar sentence, it is one sentence
without joining. So within a few days of ayo ung p er son ge tting the d e tentio n
t r a in i n g o r d e r t h e r e is a p l a n n i n gmeeting held at the institution which
involves the youth offending team andwith the plan for what to do with theyoung person lasts through the sentence
in a secure detention part and also in thecommunity part. How well th at ishappening in practice I do not know.
One of the problems with the trainingo rde r is that it a p pe are d to b e very
attrac tive to the se nte nce rs, so th enumber of young people who arer e ce i vin g t hi s se n te n c e h a s gr o w n .
Because in theory it is obviously a muchbetter idea, if are going to send somebody
to custody, it is much better, and you plan
their release from day one, and when
they are released back to the community,
there is a place at school, there a place tostay, some supervision with their family
and all of that. And of course if you are ina court, if you are a magistrate, thatappears very attractive, because theYouth Justice Board says we are making
these institutions much better than theyused to be. And there is some progress
being made, that of course makes thesentence attractive, and it is an age-old
problem for penal reform and change how
y o u i m p r o v e c o n d it i o n s i n c u s t o d y
without making custody so attractivethat more people go and you can notcontinue the improvement, because you
have too much crowding, and too many
people, and trying to get out from thatcircle is quite important.
The other custodial sentence that isstill available is long-term detention for
those youngsters who commit grievous
crimes. I mentioned two boys that were
co nvi c t ed of mu rd e ri ng t he b a b y i n
Liverpool. They were 11 by the time they
were sentenced. They received what is an
automatic sentence of detention “at her
majesty’s pleasure” which is effectively alife sentence, it does not mean that they
spend their whole lives locked up, and inf a c t th e r e ha s b e e n a g r e a t d e a l o f
litigation, and a great deal of publicdebate about precisely how long theseboys should serve. I think this week theparole board, which is a body that decides
when long term prisoners should be
released is considering the case of these
two boys. They will probably be given new
identities when they are released, andthere is some talk that they may be given
new lives in other parts of the world. I do
not know but that’s by the by. It shows
how much public concern there has been
about this case. But there are long-term
detentions for other grievous crimes andthe law, I think, compared with othersystems around the world is very tough inour country for youngsters who commit
serious crimes. By grievous crimes wemean any crime broadly that in the caseof the adult carries 14 years
imprisonment or more. In fact, 1 or 2
other offences as well, but that meanst ha t a n o f fe nc e l i ke rob b e ry , w hi chcarries the maximum life imprisonment,
you can as a juvenile get any thing up tolife imprisonment for a robbery. Robbery

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obviously covers a huge range of different
kinds of crimes, from armed robbery
w h e r e p e o p le a r e h u r t , t h r o u g h t osomeb ody taking something off fromsomebody on the street. In London we
have had a real spate of theft of mobile
telephones. I don’t know if you have thisp r ob le m in Ja pa n . I d o n’t th ink so ,because it seems that you do not reallyhave crime here in Japan, but you have a
lot of mobile phones. In Great Britain, inthe cities, there has been a big problem ofchildren stealing mobile phones fromeach other and sometimes threatening
each other. Now if the are caught they
can be charged. If they said, “give me
your mobile phone or I will hit you,” that
could be robbery and so, some of theseboys are getting quite long sentences forthat. So, that’s a little about custodial
sentences,
Moving back to the framework that I
talked about, we went to the third of thesix objectives. I have already talked about
the final warning intervention. The idea
when someone gets a final warning it
isn’t just a police officer saying don’t you
do that again. It is actually referred to
the youth offending team, who say, wholook at the case and say, “right, is thisyoungster going to school, how are they
doing with their mother and father, isthere any problem with drink or drugs?”
They are actually making some kind of
ass ess me nt, an d if n ece ssar y do ing
something. Maybe it is not a great deal
because remember the proportionality
question, we are not talking about greatin ter ve ntio n he re , but we mig ht be
t a l k i ng a b o ut a nu m b er o f s e s s i o ns
designed to try to improve the way theb oy think s a bout going to school, or
control his temper, or some advice about
drinking and drugs and health education.
At least there is some intervention.
Obviously, multidisciplinary youth

140

offending teams in themselves are a wayof tackling the risk factors, by having
som ebody from the Educatio n
Department, and somebody from the
Health Department, that provides theopportunity for the experts from those
fields to be able to try and ensure that the
youngsters are getting the services thatth e y ne e d . N o w t hi s le a d s in to th equestion of whether those services were
provided directly by youth offending
teams, and this is an issue I think that’s
coming up in a workshop group that I will
be involved in. Certainly my view is that
if a child has a right to be educated,which they do until 16 in our country,
then they don’t lose that right by being an
offender. What we do now is that a lot ofoffenders are out of school, they maybe
don’t want to go, they maybe have been
excluded from the school, but it is no
reason for the schools to wash their handsof their responsibility for these children,and by hav ing s omebody from theEd uca tion De partm ent in the youth
offending team to teach the kids to read,
write or geography or science orwhatever, they are there to get a child aplace in school, where they can properly
learn those things. Similarly the personfrom the Health Department isn’t theren e c e s s a r i l y t o p r o v i d e p s y c h i a t r ic
intervention, they are there to get that
service. So that is an imp ortantdistinction. Of course those people may dosome direct work with the individuals,
but I think it is important there aregateways to the mainstream services forthese boys and girls, rather than setting
up some shadow service which would bev e r y m u c h w o r se — th a t is t h e id e a
anyway.
The third item o n he re is A SS ET.
ASSET is the name of the assessment
tool or assessment form that the Youth
Justice Board has developed. It is part ofan initiative which YJB has created, but

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
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basically the exception is that ASSET isused on all young offenders or certainly
all that go to court. It is a bit too time
consuming to underta ke a t the final
warning stage, so we are developing asmaller version of it. But the idea is that
there is a systematic assessment of theneeds and the risks that an individual
poses. There is a particular concern about
drug misuse in our country, a lot of young
people misuse drugs. Fortunately it’s
mostly cannabis, marijuana, soft drugs,
there are a small number who use harddrugs, amphetamines or ecstasy or there
are smaller numbers still who become
involved with cocaine or heroine, highly
addictive opiates and so on. Obviously
involvement with drugs very often meansa link with crime because needing to pay
for drugs means you need to have money,an d yo un gs te rs w ill o f te n n ot h a v emoney. There is also the problem with a
lot of youngsters who drink too muchalcohol, there are a lot of alcoholic drinks
w hich seem to b e ta rgeted a t young
people particularly. The idea is that every
youth offending team will from this year
have a worker who will be responsible fortrying to ensure that youngsters arescreened, are assessed specifically for thisquestion of drugs misuse, and w here
appropriate, some services are put inplace to deal with that. New projects,
e f f e ct ive p ra cti ce , b et te r d e te n tio nfacilities, these are all part of a packageof reforms to try to tackle risk factors,
that the Youth Justice Board is doingquite a lot about.
Perhaps I have said enough about thewhole proportionality question, but one
th ing again I will me nt ion n ow ar e
intensive supervisions and surveys. As
p rogra mm es these a re ne w kinds o fprojects that will be established this yearby the Youth Justice Board in local areas.
I m e nt io n e d t ha t t he c o n d it io n s incustodial establishments, we are trying to

improve them, they are still really notvery adequate, the reconviction rates foryoung people coming out of custodial
establishments are about 85%
reconvicted within 2 years. So more than
8 out of 10, nearly 9 out of 10, which isvery, very high. We, the Youth Justice
Board, also did some research whichfound that there were some young peopleof any age who were being sentenced or
remanded in custody, because there wasnothing in the local area that provided
intensive enough supervision.
Even with the youth offending teams
and infrastructure I have talked about,there are some young people who needvery much cl os er su perv ision an dmonitoring. The intensive supervision
surveillance scheme will provide 2 things:
very intensive programmes, this may
provide actual education, this will be forchildren who can’t for whatever reason go
to local schools, so this scheme may wellactually provide direction during the day,education during the day, they will havea restorative component, they will work
on offending behavior, but they will also
have a surveillance component, that willcomprise what is called intelligence-leadpolicing, so the police will keep a very
close watch on those individuals who aresubjected to this. Or it will be suppliedwith electronic monitoring, so the young
offenders will wear a bracelet on theirankle which emits an electronic signal
and this is a way of enforcing curfews. So
if the youngster agrees to the scheme andpart of the rules are he has to be at homefrom 7o’clock every week day, then theelectronic bracelet is the way of knowing
whether he will keep that curfew. We
have also another technological systemcalled voice verification, in which an
imprint of the voice of the young person istaken, and then they are phoned at home,
and they have to answer some questions
which are different every day. And you

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know where the person you are talking to
is at the time you want. That is, in a way,a b e t t e r w a y o f e n f o r c i ng c u r f e w s ,because it does not require wearing thebracelet on the ankle. It also enables you
to m onitor if the young person iswherever they are supposed to be during
the day, at school, keeping appointmentswith so and so at work, going to see a
psychologist or whatever, it provides away of keeping track of where the young
offender is. The idea is, this is a very closemonitoring and supervision, very likely to
be more criticized, that question about
w hether practitioners support thesechanges, some practitioners do not likethis so much. My argument is if I had achoice of going to prison or having anelectronic tag, I would have an electronic
bracelet. So why should I not allow thischoice to others in that position, and aslong as it is used on people who would go
to prison, then it is fine, the problem withthese intensive alternatives is that they
are sometimes not used to replace theprison population, but to supplement thecommunity treatment population, so you
do not red uce the prisoners. Tha t issomething we will have to watch very
closely.
The final objective was about parenting
and parental responsibility, again thishas been a slightly controversial subject,because the idea that parents should be,
have to account for offences committed bytheir children, some people find in conflictwith basic principles of law. Basically the
Crime and Disorder Act allows the court
to place a parenting order on parents.
A nd the parenting ord er has 2components and 2 elements, first of all, it
requires the parents to take proper careand control of the child, and secondly it
can require the parents to participate in acourse of guidance, a session designed totry to improve their parenting skills, andwhat is controversial about this is that

142

they can be required to do this, and ifthey do not participate, they can be fined,
and if they don’t pay the fine, they could
automatically be imprisoned. It has never
happened, but it is a possibility in theory.
I was initially quite against fo rcing
parents to do this, I think there is a lot tobe said for developing these courses on a
voluntary basis, and trying to provide
support and help to parents, but I havechanged my mind because I have talked
to some parents and I have seen evidence
that some parents say that they would
not have attended if they had not been
forced by the court and they have foundthe classe s very he lp ful. T he Yo uth
Justice Board has been funding someprojects, parenting projects, and we havea little bit of evidence about how they are
working. There are 3 final orders whichhave some relevancy to parental
responsibility, the first—local childcurfews—this was a measure that was
introduced in the Crime and Disorder Act
which allowed the police and the local
governm ent to apply to central
government to institute a local curfew ina particular area and that would meanthat anybody under the age of 18 would
not be allow ed out the homes on thestreet after the certain time unless they
are accompanied by an adult. Now, as far
as I know there have not been any ofthese yet implemented. I think I made a
mistake with the ages initially, the local
curfew was introduced for children under
the age of 10, and the government has
recently extended it not to 18 but to 16, so
it would be interesting to see whether
these are used, and if they have any
impact. They are used in certain cities in
the United States, they have been used in
Scotland, and some people say that have
had a great impact on public order interms of crimes committed by young
people. Other people said that it is a great
infringement into civil liberty, not being
able to leave your house at certain times.

118TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE
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So we have that discussion to come.
Obviously the link with parents is that
if one of these schemes is in operation andthe child is found to be out after thecurfew, the n the parents will besumm oned to the police sta tion a nd
required to make some kind ofundertaking that this would not happen,
but if it happens repeatedly the
expectation is that there would be an
investigation by the welfare authority
into the possibility of proceedings if thechild is not being properly supervised
Similarly the child safety order was anorder that was introduced for children in
respect of children under the age of 10. I
said that the age of criminal
responsibility was 10, but obviously there
are children under 10 who do things that
if they are over 10 would be described as
crimes I guess, or at least they takethings from shops, they behave badly inc er ta in wa ys, th e go ve rnm e nt ha v e
introduced an order which the youth
offending team or the social services
departments can apply for to the court, inthese circumstances, and it allows somework, some measures, some programmes
to be introduced to even these younger
age groups of under 10 year old children.
Now there have only been a very small
number of these orders made, because inp r a c t i c e th e r e a r e o t h e r m e a s u r e savailable under the child welfare law todeal with these problems. So in a way I
think it is unnecessary.
Finally, and again this has been quite
controversial in our country, thegovernment has introduced somethingcalled an antisocial behavior order, andthis is really a kind of legal injunction
where somebody is behaving badly, where
they a re, I think th e ter m in la w is“causing alarm harassment or distress tosomebody,” perhaps they are up till late
at night making a lot of noise, over andover again, and they won’t let any body
sleep, they might be out drunk every
night in public housing, threatening
people as they go home, and everything
ha s b e e n d o n e t o c h a n g e t ha t , a n dapplication can be made for an antisocial
behavior order which would allow the
court to say, ‘right you must not go to thisplace, we are making the legal rules thatyou stay away from this particular public
housing area, or this particular part oftown, between these hours or this periodof time.’ This has been used on a numberof juve niles in Britain, p articularly
juveniles who have committed quite a lotof crimes. Bu t there ha s not been
evidence to be able to use criminal law toconvict them, often they might be serious
things, and everybody seems to know that
it is a particular boy who was doing all of
this, but nobody, perhaps they are too
frightened to give evidence, perhaps
no bod y re ally is p re p are d to say orwhatever. What it means is thein j un c t io n i s b r o k e n if th i s p e r so n
continues to behave that way and canthen be sentenced in the case of adultcustody and in the ca se of juve nile s
automaticallyputinsecureaccommodation. It is controversial that
this law is framed in a very general kindof way, and there are some human rights
lawyers who do not like the way it isdrafted in such a general way w hichallows such a wide range of behavior, tobe throw n into an encompassment ofm e a s u r e s o f s o m e b o d y lo s in g th e ir
liberty. And obviously there are
implications for parents of children who
are made subject of those orders.
In co nclusio n, I ho pe w ha t I havedescribed is a quite wide ranging reform.
But really the implementation in practiceis the key to whether it will work or not.
There is more change on the way, because
there is this important change to how the
first time offenders in court adapt to it.

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