By Francisco Santos

Intro

When discussing what makes a young offender some key questions arise: what parts are played in shaping delinquency, what can be done to avoid it and what are the societal responsibilities involved both in their creation and rehabilitation?

Dr Vicky Palmer, senior lecturer at NTU with experience as a probation officer and Youth Justice social worker, writes the following statement in the introduction section of her thesis: “I believe that youth offending has its roots in shifting sands that are ultimately grounded in the functioning and structure of contemporary society”

When asked to elaborate she had the following to say: “Mid 19th century we started to categorise crimes in terms of age, and we identified youth as a distinct category. Once youth crime had been placed in its distinct category it became seen as deserving of special attention. Things like new status offences were attributed to juveniles only, things that adults couldn’t be prosecuted for.

“So it’s the government, if you’d like, that defines the parameters of youth crime, and those shifting sands refer to how those parameters shift over time. For example, when New Labour came in in 1997 they wanted a new approach to youth crime and much of what they did was brilliant, the injection of funding into youth justice teams, the setting up of new youth offending teams, but, one thing that New Labour did was to set youth crime as a priority, so it was targeted, and you had young people being prosecuted for doing things that they would never ever have been prosecuted for before.”

This reflects the stance that New Labour had on crime at the time, being known for “being tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, focusing on supporting young people through the funding of social security, but also focusing on punishing young offenders.

Dr Palmer goes on to discuss some of her experience at the time: “I personally dealt with a young girl, aged 11, who’d been prosecuted for drawing a hopscotch grid in chalk on the street outside her house. I dealt with a young lad, aged 11-12, who was charged with the offence of criminal damage for climbing a tree in a park, and during the course of the climb of that tree, he broke one of the tree’s branches.”

Adding: “They would never, prior to new labour, have been seen as unlawful acts, acts to be prosecuted, but these shifting sands kind of impacted upon youth crime at that time, and what we saw during New Labour’s time, was an increase in prison population for children. It went up to 3,500 young people*, who were placed in a secure estate, and if you compare that to what we have now, which is about 450, it’s a massive difference.”

In addition to the history behind youth offending providing prior context, there also seems to be a factor of culture mixed in, particularly about how children and young people are treated by their environment.

Dr Palmer explains: “I would say that culturally in the U.K., we have historically had an intolerance to children and we still very much adhere to that old Victorian principle of ‘children should be seen and not heard’.

She goes on to compare this to Scandinavian and Mediterranean countries, mentioning how one is much more likely to encounter children late at night out with their families in those countries as opposed to the U.K., where children and young people are often barred from key social gathering places such as pubs.

Saying: “They’re vilified and criticised so if they are allowed into a social club there’ll be big notes around saying “children are not allowed to run in this building”, children run, that is what they do. We lack tolerance and I can’t see that changing.”

The Main Factors

While there are countless aspects that contribute to youth offending, some stand out and influence more than others. 

In explaining her perspective on youth crime, Dr Palmer says: “The three most contributory factors to the commission of youth crimes – Number one, is school exclusion and it will come to the top of my list forever in a day, you deny a child their education, you’re not only denying them pursuit of qualifications et cetera, you’re denying them social integration, school trips, health checks and everything that comes along with it, and they will have an unstructured day where children will be children and they will often get into no good.  

“The second one is neurodiversity, particularly undiagnosed children trying to be dealt with in mainstream schools, they don’t stand a chance of surviving the sensory issues. These large establishments changing classrooms all the time, it doesn’t work, so again leading to school exclusion which correlates to youth crime. 

“The other major factor is all of those other things put together, like poverty deprivation, living in disadvantage, having parents that commit crime or that are in prison, being in care – that’s another major contributory factor.”

Young people under any of these conditions can either be pushed or fall into offending, often through no fault of their own, but rather because of the circumstantial apathy and indifference that surrounds them.

Dr Palmer exemplifies this: “I have got two boys, they’re both grown up now, but when they were young they would commit acts of criminal damage in my house, sometimes purposefully, sometimes not. If one of them in temper smashed some plates on the floor, I would sweep it up and try and deal with the matter, talk about it, and that would be the end of it. If they do that in the children’s home the police would be brought in and they have every chance of being prosecuted for criminal damage in the care home.” 

The Statistics

In a dataset released in early 2023 by the Office for National Statistics they look at “The links between young people being imprisoned, school quality and pupil background”. 

The set looks at over 500,000 people born between the years of 1993/94, and it puts into perspective a lot of the information laid out so far.

To begin with the data points to a possible correlation between grading and sentencing, although the numbers are quite low meaning it could be coincidental, but students graded a satisfactory or inadequate in the school year of 2009/10 were slightly more likely to receive an immediate custodial sentence by the age of 23/24, with roughly 1.37 percent of those students receiving one, compared to those graded outstanding or good, of which only about 0.92 percent received one.

The data is less ambiguous, however, when looking at students with special education needs, those who were recorded to have behavioural, emotional and social difficulties (BESD) were nearly nine times more likely to receive an immediate custodial sentence compared to students with no recorded educational needs, with 6 percent of those in the former receiving one compared to the 0.7 percent of those in the latter.

This trend is repeated with looked-after children, with about 7.2 percent of them receiving an immediate custodial sentence compared to the rounded 1 percent from the rest of the sample.

Of the Children in Need, a rounded 4.5 percent received one, over four times the 0.9 percent from the rest of the sample.

And when it comes to ethnicity only about 0.9 percent of white British students received an immediate custodial sentence compared to the 4 percent of students of black ethnicity.

When put together these numbers show a clear bias and focus towards either marginalised or disadvantaged groups, supporting the earlier statements of Dr Palmer.

Possible Solutions 

Unsurprisingly an issue of this magnitude requires several approaches to solve, most of them involving better support to disadvantaged children.

Dr Palmer lists a few of these, starting by stating the need for early diagnosis for children, and how schools should hold some responsibility as parents may not understand that the behaviour of their young person might be abnormal as well as not knowing what’s driving it.

Adding: “Also what we’ve got to employ is a form of positive youth justice – seeing children as children first, offenders second. We need to address youth crime in a much more child friendly and child appropriate manner. Children should be seen as part of the solution, at times we fail to listen to their voices, we don’t listen to what they’re saying to us.”

In addition to these she emphasises the importance of child centre dedicated spaces and youth clubs, and keeping them open throughout all the holiday breaks. 

Also focusing on how schools need to change some of their policies regarding exclusion, how it should not happen as often, and in the cases where it does happen they need to make sure the place the child will go to should be tailored to their needs.

Explaining: “They can’t be putting everyone in pupil referral units, you have some very vulnerable children in there and we know that they’re recruiting grounds for things like county lines. And just remembering that the adult brain is not fully developed until the age of 25, that is so crucial in terms of understanding why children offend.”

Beyond preventing offending at its roots, Dr Palmer goes on to detail the ways persistent young offenders can be engaged with during their custody and be reintroduced into their communities: “We need to be able to work with those children closely whilst they’re in the secure estate.

“To work alongside them, not only the children, to work alongside their families to make sure that the families are able to visit the young people in prison and to reassure their children.”

Also adding the need for funding youth offending services, social services and children’s homes, along with better training for their staff and the assurance that the young people have something to go to when they leave the secure estate, such as an alternative provision or an apprenticeship.

She further stresses the value of understanding mental health and its nuances, saying: “Just bearing in mind how to recognise facets of mental health as compared to facets of neurodiversity, and recognising that each brings their own unique challenges. Certain mental health can be medicated, autism can’t, ADHD can be calmed with certain medication, so I think it’s more about resources and the lack thereof, that we aren’t addressing these mental health issues with young people in the youth justice system correctly.”

Expressing: “If I had my own way, I would have a dedicated mental health module, where we cover every single aspect over the course of a whole academic year, to teach youth justice practitioners all about this.”

Dr Palmer shares how this should also be integrated into the justice system by talking about a recent case she witnessed regarding a young man with autism who had been stalking two girls.

She says: “It was the autism itself that was driving it, his lack of maturity and lack of understanding of theory of mind, meant that he didnt realise the impact that his behaviour was having on the two ‘so called’ victims involved.

“He was operating on the level of a much younger boy in terms of the way he was going about pursuing relationships and what he thought was acceptable, and whilst the courts seemingly listened to it all, they took not one blind bit of notice when passing sentence on that young man. 

“I understand it because of the need to embrace the victim perspective and to protect the public, but to my mind what needed to be done, was for them not to be so harsh and for them to place him on a period of supervision where he’s going to tap into and access help in the way his autism is progressing. 

“Helping the courts to understand that what was driving that behaviour was not a desire on that young man’s part to cause harm in any form to those victims, it was his idea of pursual of romantic relationships.”

Conclusion

With her concluding thoughts Dr Palmer expresses the following to anyone looking to get involved with youth justice and working with young people: “Only pursue such a career if you are passionate about young people, if you are understanding and tolerant of them, if you are willing to listen to them, because you bear in mind that when you’re working with young people like this it is an absolute privilege, you are allowed into a world you’d never probably previously seen, or are ever likely to.

“There is never a dull moment in working in a career along these lines, always expect the unexpected, never be afraid of young people, and don’t show fear if you are afraid.

“Don’t show shock because once you’ve done that you’ve lost them, they think they can’t trust you and they won’t tell you anymore and there’s always more to what they’re telling you than meets the eye. 

“Find ways to work with them, if they won’t talk to you, if they only grunt, find other methods, find what suits them, if they’re not the kind that likes going to McDonalds, take them to the gym and show them around the local gym. 

“Always bear in mind that every young person has the potential to do great things in their life and in the course of my career I have seen it happen many times.”