Meeting National Standards for Scotlands Youth Justice Services Bill Whyte

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Meeting National Standards for Scotlands Youth
Justice ServicesBill Whyte
www.cjsw.ac.uk
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• Practice Objectives
• Provide effective measures forcare, protection
  .. or control
• Enable children and families to recognise and
  tackle successfully their difficulties and
  problems
• Reduce offending behaviour
• Help ensure school attendance
• Provide programmes of supervision ..to integrate
  the chid in the community
• Maintain confidence of panel members and the
  public in...effectiveness
• C(S)Act 1995 Ch 2 par4

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• Youth Crime Review
• prevention
• early intervention
• diversion from criminal processes
• multi-disciplinary co-ordinated
• participation
• Scottish Executive 2000
• National youth crime and antisocial behaviour
  strategies
• LA multi-agency strategic group and youth crime
  co-ordinators
• National Standards for Scotlands Youth Justice
  Services
• National Guidance on ASB children and young
  people
• Standardised Assessment Tools -ASSET or YLS/CMI
  for persistent offending
• Crime Prevention
• Restorative Justice Provision across Scotland
• Specialist workers
• Fast track Children Hearings and Pilot youth
  court

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• Shared and Corporate Responsibility
• Social Work, Education, Leisure, Housing, Drugs,
  Mental Health, Employment, Careers.
• Children (Scotland) Act 1995
• Anti-Social Behaviour (Scotland) Act 2004
• Voluntary assistance Written agreements (ABA,
  ABC) identifying
• - behaviour agreed to stop support they
  can expect consequences
• Anti-social Behaviour Orders ASBOs
• Parenting Orders
• Supervision Requirements
• ISSMs - Electronic monitoring
• Street Wardens
• Powers of dispersal
• Financial penalties for noise and environment
  issues

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• UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
• Beijing Rules, 1985
• well being of the young person
• emotional, mental and intellectual maturity
• socio-educational responses
• extra judicial approaches
• avoidance of deprivation of liberty
• right to representation
• Riyadh Guidelines, 1990 -
• early intervention - shared responsibility
  -multi disciplinary responses
• Havana Rules, 1990
• role of prosecutors and diversion
• ECHR Art 8
  - right to avoid state
  involvement
• Howard League High Court Review on Children in
  Criminal Justice/Detention

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• Its a Criminal Waste Stop Youth Crime Now 2000
• Audit Scotland reports 2002 2007
• Scotlands Action Programme to Reduce Youth Crime
  2002
• Supporting Safer Stronger Communities Scotlands
  Criminal Justice Plan 2004
• Youth Justice Improvement Group 2006
• New Scottish Government 2007 prevention and
  early intervention

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National Standards March 2006 improve the quality
of the youth justice process initial and
comprehensive assessment, ASSET/YLS-CMI, action
plan improve the range and availability of
programmes to stop youth offending reduce time
to reach/implement Hearing decisions improve
information to victims and local
communities victim information target the use of
secure accommodation - ensure effectiveness impro
ve the strategic direction and co-ordination -
annual an audit   
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• Key Issues
• Responsibility
• Individual
• Shared
• Corporate
• Multi-disciplinary Targets, Capacity and
  Standards
• Need and Risk

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• Life course and persistent
• Hyperactivity and high daring
• Family difficulties at a young age
• Cognitive difficulties
• Adolescent limited
• Anti-social peers
• Criminality in the family
• Poor educational attachment and achievement
  alcohol and drugs
• Moffitt 1993, Rutter et al 1998

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• Risk Factors
• Criminal anti-social at an early age
  PLUS
• Multiple difficulties
• disruptive and disrupted families
• social educational difficulties
• alcohol drug problems
• ASB, pre-criminal behaviour
• bullying , aggression, or other violent activity
  with anti social activity
• the risk of becoming a persistent offender in
  later teens is two to three times higher for
  those first offending under the aged under 12
  than for a young person whose onset of offending
  is later
• (McGarrell, 2001)

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• overt antisocial behaviours often seem well
  established by the time the child begins school.
• Mix of mix of temperamental risk and
  inexperienced vulnerable coercive parenting.
  Patterson and Yoerger, 1993 1997
• Pattersons coercion model
• begins during the toddler stage - transformed
  during pre-school and primary school
• persistent attention-seeking, non-compliance
  physically aggressive behaviour, fighting,
  antisocial and bullying
• School
• unpopular, withdrawn isolated, rejected
  by 5
• viewed as anti-social at school
  by 8
• reading age of 11, AS peers, disaffection,
  truancy 11-14

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• Family factors
• poor parental supervision, harsh and inconsistent
  discipline, parental conflict and parental
  rejection, disrupted and early separations (both
  permanent and temporary), criminality in the
  family
  Farrington,
  1996.
• Parenting style
• family controls, relationships and activities,
  parental supervision, managing day to day
  routines of such as friendships, use of money,
  bedtime
  Laybourn, 1986.
• family structure less important than parenting
  style and parent-child attachment.
  Juby and
  Farrington, 2001
• drugs and alcohol aged 12-17 Flood-Page et
  al., 2000Honess et al., 2000.
• being a victim of crime may be one of the most
  important predictors of delinquency
  Smith 2002

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• Prevention Early intervention Pick ups
• Under 5 - persistent attention-seeking,
  non-compliance, physically aggressive behaviour
  HALT 4
• in-home skills based modelling
• Age 5-8 isolated unpopular, poor concentration -
  Statutory assessment
• parent skills programme and individual
  developmental work with child
• Age 8-11 bullying and anti-social associations
• As above with greater focus on parental
  supervision, school enhancement, behaviour,
  associations
• Age 11-14 Literacy, numeracy personal management,
  ASB, offending
• structured family work
• Age 15 persistent offending
• multi-systemic family focused work, offence
  focused programmes

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• Effective Responses
• diverting young people from formal systems
  altogether
• target resources to those who continue to present
  the greatest risk
• set practices for ASB and youth crime within a
  wider social inclusion framework

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• Ineffective responses
• Netwidening
• - drawn unnecessarily into formal process
  to their detriment.
• Scarce resources used inappropriately
• -used unnecessarily to detriment of those
  most risky.

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Levels of causes for concern about young
people. Information sharing and pick up points?
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Low level concern
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• Some things do work sometimes!
• action-oriented methods
• social learning methods
• cognitive-behavioural
• life skills
• family work
• Reid and Fortune, 1998

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Summary Plan Priorities reducing risk to others
reducing re-offending
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Personal and Social Integration towards
desistenceBe realistic - change takes timeUse
informal approaches where possibleAvoid the use
of secure accommodation, detention and
custodyBuild positive working allianceRespect
individualityRecognise the social contextUse
language meaningfullyPromote self efficacy and
integration
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