Policies Into Practice: Intermediate Treatment and Community Service Compared

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe philosophy and the policies for dealing with both juvenile and adult offenders in England and Wales have undergone a marked change in the last decade with the introduction of both the Children and Young Persons Act, 1969, and the Criminal Justice Act, 1972. The spirit behind the policies embodied in the first of these was intended to move juvenile offenders even further towards the provisions for children and young people in general and away from identification with adult offenders and the criminal process. In spite of this, many similarities remain between the two major innovations which emerged from these two pieces of legislation, which were intermediate treatment and community service. In terms of implementing these policies, however, wide differences have emerged in the speed, ease, and uniformity with which the different provisions have been introduced. Intermediate treatment, after a long struggle, is only just beginning to establish itself as a practical provision for juveniles whilst community service, introduced some years later, has now been fully implemented. This difference raises fundamental issues related to the implementation of certain areas of social policy. Although the failure of the 1969 Act to achieve the impact envisaged by its proponents has been attributed to its being only partially implemented and to lack of finance, amongst other things, comparison with the relatively successful introduction of community service suggests that there may also be important administrative factors underlying this failure which have been hitherto ignored.