Youth Justice Research Articles

College Students’ Anticipated Bystander Intervention Actions Against Male Supremacism: “Something More Needs to be Done”

Male supremacist groups and ideas are an increasing threat to the positive development of young people, including college students. This study examines actions students proposed taking when presented with a scenario in which a male classmate displayed warning signs of having been exposed to male supremacist ideas online. We conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students involved in sexual violence prevention efforts on college campuses, who acted as key informants. Participants were ages 18 to 23, female or non-binary, and attended geographically diverse U.S. colleges. More than 50% held marginalized racial and/or ethnic identities, and more than 50% held LGBTQ+ identities. We analyzed students’ responses using critical thematic analysis informed by social justice youth development and antifascist violence prevention. Students suggested direct intervention strategies to encourage change in the hypothetical classmate, and identified peers, faculty, and staff who they would talk to about the warning signs. Students also identified barriers to intervention, including personal safety risks and wanting proof of harm. Findings indicate the need for: institutional resources for options other than peer bystander intervention that can promote individual change; support for students to assess their safety when choosing intervention strategies; and antifascist community-building.

Social Identity Mapping With Justice‐Involved Young People: Exploring Identity Pathways to Aid the Desistance of Criminal Offending

ABSTRACTSocial groups and the environments they create play a prominent role in the desistance versus persistence of young peoples' criminal offending. Social Identity Mapping (SIM) provides a quantitative method for understanding the social network of young offenders. This exploratory study was guided by two broad research questions: (1) using the SIM task, we wanted to investigate the experiences of young people moving through the Youth Justice System in Aotearoa New Zealand, and (2) through the use of the SIM task combined with qualitative interviews, we wanted to gain novel insight into the influences that important social groups had on young people's behaviour. The participants were nine young people currently working their way through the Youth Justice System in Aotearoa New Zealand. The average number of groups identified in the SIM task was four (range: 3–6), with the most common groups identified being friends, family, and Gisborne (i.e., the town in which participants all lived). Through the semi‐structured interviews, participants noted that they were excluded from some groups (e.g., school) due to their delinquent behaviour. In addition, despite strong motivation to join the workforce and develop a career, participants' social networks and low educational attainment made achieving this goal very challenging. Our findings suggest that desistance efforts would be well served by broadening young offenders' social networks.

Re-Designing Secure Children’s Homes Through a Child-First Lens

This article explores existing learning gaps concerning optimal ways to support children within and beyond secure care in England and Wales, with a specific focus on Secure Children’s Homes (SCHs). Insights from key stakeholders working in SCHs are often omitted from research despite being fundamental to understanding both challenges and best-practice initiatives. The Children’s Residential Care Research Network, which is a collaboration between the authors, aims to develop novel research with stakeholders working across the secure children’s estate and expand the extant literature to inform the design and build of future Secure Children’s Homes (SCH) through a Child-First lens. The research presented here involves a mixed-methods approach gathering rich qualitative data from participants across the sector. Fifty-three participants engaged in participatory methodologies, focus groups, and interviews, which led to a large data set. Thematic analysis identified three key themes to inform the design and build of new SCHs. SCHs should (i) be close to home to enable family involvement and continuity of care, (ii) feel like a home, and (iii) be flexible and adaptive to changing needs. These findings are feeding into the design of two new homes in England as well as the refurbishment of existing provision and can also influence future expansion of the secure estate. The research also contributes to knowledge about how the Child-First tenets can be engaged to improve outcomes for children deprived of their liberty, both in and outside the youth justice system.

Raciality, intersubjectivity and transgression in the Brazilian system of socio-educational services: insights for social education

Social work and social pedagogy deal with a diverse and intricate set of social realities, while facing major issues such as racism and interracial relations. In this article, we look at studies of racism in Brazil and data from research into intersubjectivity conducted in the context of Brazilian socio-educational services. We also consider the ideas of Paulo Freire and bell hooks, notably bell hooks’s conception of transgression in an engaged pedagogy and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed and pedagogy of hope. We present and discuss a theoretical model for addressing ethnic-racial issues and racism in educational settings, involving processes of peripherisation, exclusion, invisibilisation and elimination. We aim to offer insights into social education and social work, departing from the articulation of studies of raciality, intersubjectivity, transgression and education as a practice of freedom. These insights can inform social pedagogy and the development of effective public policies and offer a broader perspective on the role of education and social work in promoting social justice and anti-racism in diverse educational settings, such as youth justice.

Within-case comparison of the adult and youth justice systems: New directions for a ‘fractured’ penal state?

Building on recent literature on the importance of local grounded comparison and the ‘fracturing’ of the penal state, this article argues that within-case comparison of the adult and youth justice systems can shed important light on the stark differences that persist in how and why we punish. Using the case of Irish youth justice to illustrate the utility of fracturing the penal state horizontally, as well as vertically, we argue that this provides a helpful lens for making sense of the drivers of penal policy, especially the historical particularities of any penal phenomenon.

Lived experiences of youth justice detention in Australia: reframing the institution in a decarcerated state

ABSTRACT This article reconsiders youth justice detention in the Australian context by exploring the lived experiences of youth detention in New South Wales (NSW) and the Northern Territory (NT). In drawing upon narratives from children and young people who have experienced detention, this article argues for shifting youth detention away from highly securitised environments, instead presenting an alternative and provisional relational rights-based framework and approach. This reimagined youth justice detaining environment builds upon the current efforts to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility across Australia to 14, and other significant measures of decarceration. This dramatically limited and transformed carceral environment would actively seek to support these young people to reach their potential through nurturing their capabilities in a trauma-informed, therapeutic and relational rights-based environment, and then linking them in with highly resourced long-term transition pathways away from the justice system.

Exploring Children’s Journeys into the Youth Justice System from Multiple Perspectives: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

In order to contribute to research into youth crime prevention, the current study aimed to explore the experiences of children in conflict with the law prior to receiving their first caution or conviction. Participants were recruited at a Youth Justice Service and included five children working with the service, their five case managers, and two of their parents/guardians. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and timelines were used to support the children in sharing their experiences. Data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, which focuses on understanding how individuals experience the world and how they make sense of those experiences. Six group experiential themes were identified within the analysis. These consider the events leading up to offending and whether it could have been predicted, the extent to which the children felt supported, the effect of school practices, the impact of peer influences, difficulties with managing emotions, and the children’s readiness for change. Each theme is discussed and recommendations for practice and future research are considered. The importance of placing children’s experiences at the forefront of research is highlighted throughout.

Responding to radicalisation and extremism risks for youth: An emerging child protection and youth justice practice issue in Aotearoa

Practice note

Impact of trauma and placement in residential or congregate care on the criminalisation of children in England/Wales and Australia

Children in residential care have the most complex needs of all children growing up in Out-of-Home care (OOHC), due to complex trauma from pre-care experiences of abuse and neglect, inadequate therapeutic supports while in care and significant placement instability. Some argue that residential care settings are intrinsically criminogenic, as evidenced by significant over-representation of this cohort in youth justice. However, little is known about how children’s experiences of trauma, including removal from family and placement in OOHC, is viewed by lawyers and decision-makers in criminal cases involving children in care. Criminal justice decisions can have long-term ramifications for children in care and custodial sentencing can often be a precursor to ongoing incarceration into adulthood. This qualitative, cross-national study explored the impacts of trauma and placement in residential or congregate care on the criminalisation of children in England/Wales and Australia. In-depth interviews were conducted with 28 legal, youth justice and judicial stakeholders in England, Wales (UK), New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (Australia). While there are considerable differences in the operation of child protection and youth justice systems between these jurisdictions, thematic analysis using NVivo14 identified. confirmed ongoing systemic factors associated with criminalisation identified in previous literature persists despite attempts to address these through policy and practice reforms. These factors include an absence of therapeutic supports, unstable and unsafe residential care placements, over-reliance on police to respond to minor incidents, increasingly punitive police responses lacking awareness of the impacts of childhood trauma and inappropriate use of custody as an ‘alternative’ placement. These findings suggest the similar systemic processes across these jurisdictions are likely to reflect deeply entrenched ideologies about ‘care’ and ‘protection’ that function to criminalise trauma. The implications of these systemic factors when children are exposed to formal criminal justice decision-making are considered.

Police legitimacy and procedural justice for children and youth: a scoping review of definitions, determinants, and consequences.

Understanding police legitimacy among children and youth is important for building a just and democratic society. Although the volume of studies on police legitimacy among underaged persons has grown in recent decades, the findings on the relationships between police legitimacy and procedural justice and their definitions, associated determinants, and consequences remain heterogeneous across studies and across political and legal contexts. Given these heterogeneities, the conclusions and implications generated by this research are far from comprehensive. This scoping review offers readers a comprehensive and comparative understanding of this topic by answering the following questions. (1) How can we define police legitimacy and procedural justice for children and youth? (2) What are the determinants of police procedural justice and legitimacy for children and youth? (3) What are the consequences of police procedural (in)justice and (il)legitimacy for children and youth? (4) Among children and youth, who are the vulnerable groups receiving less legitimate and unjust treatment from the police? A scoping review of the literature published between January 1, 1990 and May 31, 2022 was conducted based on four databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and ProQuest. Guided by the scoping review screening framework proposed by Arksey and O'Malley, that is, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines, and the checklist provided by the Joanna Briggs Institute for quality assessment, 47 publications, consisting of 38 quantitative studies and 9 qualitative studies, were retained in the final sample. The results synthesize the operational and subjective interpretations of police legitimacy offered by the respondents in the studies reviewed which is followed by the discussion of conceptual and measurement issues. The key correlates of police legitimacy identified in these studies were police procedural justice and behavior, followed by experience and contact with the police, relationships with other authority figures, and personal competence in moral reasoning and self-control. In addition to compliance and cooperation, cynicism, trust, and health were related to police (il)legitimacy. We argue that in addition to building and maintaining police legitimacy, it is vital to remedy the negative consequences of injustice in police-youth encounters. https://inplasy.com/inplasy-2024-9-0064/, INPLASY202490064.

The Administration of Youth Justice Through the Lens of Community-Based Service Providers: Risk Factors and Programming Challenges

Since the Youth Criminal Justice Act of 2003 in Canada, the juvenile justice system has prioritized diverting youth away from in-custody sentences (incarceration in jail, prison, or other facilities) and towards a community-based system of justice. Despite this shift, there is limited research directly examining the experience of community-based service providers that were responsible for this shift in adjudicating youth. To understand the experience of working with youth involved in the system, we conducted semi-structured interviews with youth justice workers from one of the largest community-based organizations in a western Canadian province that offer alternatives to custody for at-risk youth. Findings provide a complex depiction of youth risk factors and illustrate the successes and challenges of administering youth justice in a community context.

Linking data across multiple sectors to reduce health inequities among justice-involved young people in Australia

BackgroundA scarcity of evidence on the health and social needs of justice-involved young people contributes to persistent health and social inequities. Linking data from multiple sectors provides an opportunity to improve the health, justice, and social systems that this group interacts with, with a view to reducing these inequities. MethodsWe established two population-level cohorts of justice-involved young people using multi-sectoral data linkage: (1) we linked youth justice records in Queensland from 1993-2014 for 48,670 young people to adult correctional records, death records, and coronial records; (2) we linked all youth justice records in Australia from 2000-2019 for 88,110 young people with national emergency department, hospital, primary care, pharmaceutical, and death records. We calculated mortality rates among young people exposed to the youth justice system and compared them with the age- and sex-matched general population. ResultsJustice-involved young people in Queensland died at a 4.1 times higher rate than their non-justice-involved peers. Approximately one-third (34.6%) of deaths were from suicide. There was a 67% increased rate of death due to non-communicable diseases compared to the general population. ConclusionsThe national cohort will fill evidence gaps on health needs and health care use after justice system contact. These two cohorts provide the first comprehensive look into the health of justice-involved young people in Australia and internationally. They form the foundation for routine monitoring and reporting on health needs and trajectories. Multi-sectoral data linkage is essential for sustainable, timely, and evidence-informed decision-making to improve systems, health, and mortality outcomes.

Fa’a Sāmoa Criminology: An Aspect of Pacific Criminology Counternarrative

Criminological imagination requires that criminologists adopt multiple perspectives on their study subjects, shifting backwards and forwards between the personal and remote, the micro and the macro, or the theoretical and the empirical. Criminology should thus be ‘refractive’ (Frauley 2015: 21), harnessing the multi-perspectivism of social life to produce fuller, sharper analyses that reveal links between individual lives, social structures, and historical context. One such perspective is fa’a Sāmoa criminology. Not much is known about this worldview or its relationship with criminology, let alone its application as a credible epistemology. This article argues that Western criminology is not the only way to generate new knowledge and recommended solutions and that instead fa’a Sāmoa criminology offers an alternative way. Two qualitative case studies demonstrate how Sāmoan thinking and doing applies in the contexts of Sāmoan young people’s interaction with the youth justice system and hard-to-reach gang-involved Sāmoan peoples. Key implications are highlighted and recommended.

Partners in crime: Integrating forensic psychotherapy into criminological discourse

This article advocates for the integration of forensic psychotherapy into criminology to deepen our understanding of criminal behaviour, particularly serious youth violence. Despite historical interest in psychoanalytic explanations for criminal behaviour, the exploration of unconscious motivations has been marginalised. Our article emphasises the need to consider both inner psyche and external social factors by drawing on contemporary theorising in the field of psychosocial criminology and forensic psychotherapy. By presenting the case study of Rob, a young person with a history of violence, we highlight the role of forensic psychotherapy in better understanding the motivations behind an individual's violent behaviour. By adopting a case study approach, we highlight the limitations of solely attributing offending behaviour to structural inequalities. This article therefore calls for a broader consideration of forensic psychotherapeutic modalities in criminological thinking to offer more comprehensive explanations for serious youth violence. This shift towards a more holistic understanding holds promise for more effective prevention and rehabilitation strategies in the field of youth justice.

The over-representation of neurodivergent children in Youth Justice Systems and The Youth Court.

The over-representation of neurodivergent children in Youth Justice Systems and The Youth Court.

Moving from Second Sight to Critical Consciousness Building: Using Social Justice Youth Development and Youth Participatory Action Research to Promote Praxis in Out-of-School Time

Abstract Youth development programs offer flexible environments for healing and positive identity development for youth facing discrimination and oppression. Programs often occur in out-of-school time (OST), a context that is clearly positioned in tandem with the education system to create complex relationships that lead to challenges in OST spaces. Youth development programs occurring in OST settings have the potential for resisting or replicating oppressive practices toward youth occurring in the education system. This article highlights a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project within an OST program using photovoice, field trips, and arts-based strategies. Eleven youth participated in the project over the course of nine months. Thematic content analysis of weekly photovoice and critical consciousness resulted in a primary theme of peeling back the layers. This theme encompassed the evolution of youth understanding the interconnectedness between their individual-level experiences of racism and broader community and systems-level inputs. This article describes critical consciousness development of OST youth participants through intentional engagement in critical dialogue, experiential field trips, and reflective art making.

Youth Voice / Youth Action / Youth Justice

Youth Voice / Youth Action / Youth Justice

Youth justice-involved LGBTIQA+ young people: exploring practitioner and policy perspectives

ABSTRACT A growing body of research explores the intersectional needs and experiences of youth justice (YJ)-involved young people. However, there remains limited research on the experiences of and service responses to justice-involved lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, asexual and other sexually or gender-diverse (LGBTIQA+) young people. This paper contributes practitioner and policy perspectives on the topic, with focus group data from one Australian jurisdiction and a review of jurisdictional YJ policy directions. In relation to LGBTIQA+ young people, the study found that: intersectional factors influence experiences of and engagement with services; pathways to justice-system contact are variable and influenced by several factors; current service responses have several limitations in both statutory and non-statutory settings; young people’s experiences in one service influence their experiences and engagement with other services. These findings are largely unreflected in current state and territory YJ policy direction documents. The findings can inform policy and practice with justice-involved LGBTIQA+ young people in Australia and provide recommendations for future research. IMPLICATIONS: Current limitations to practice with justice-involved LGBTIQA+ young people cannot be addressed fully by individual practitioners or organisations. Identified practice concerns and limitations are largely not reflected in current state and territory YJ policy direction. Further research should explore perspectives of justice-involved LGBTIQA+ young people.

Flipping the Narrative: A Unifying Framework for Juvenile Court-based Forensic Social Work Practice

Professional social workers are trained in multiple competencies and occupy various positions within the forensic landscape. Unified by a code of ethics that emphasizes social justice and the protection and empowerment of marginalized populations and a philosophical approach that recognizes the interplay of individual and environmental factors, social work leadership in youth justice policy and practice is vital. This article proposes a unifying framework for macro, mezzo, and micro court-based forensic social work practice in the 21st century that draws from post-modern critical social work theory. The lifelong negative impacts of court involvement for young people are well documented and contribute to persistent societal inequities. Pre-disposition court practices can mitigate or further harm court-involved youth. “Flipping the Narrative” is a culturally relevant practice framework for evaluating and designing youth court practices that recognize the intersectionality of the identities and experiences of court-involved youth. The proposed framework incorporates the practical implications of Critical Theory, specifically Critical Race Theory, the Theory of African American Offending, and Queer Theory, and relevant practice approaches, such as Social Justice Youth Development and Narrative Therapy, to analyze current youth court practices, propose areas for further evaluation and innovation, and recommend practice enhancements for defense-based forensic social workers. The urgency for innovation in one New England state is illustrated through a case study.

Working Individually and Collectively: Assisting Young People with Cognitive Disability Transitioning from Statutory Systems

AbstractYoung people with cognitive disability exiting statutory child protection and/or youth justice systems are a particularly vulnerable group. They have varied, complex and dynamic needs. These are often poorly responded to, due in part to a lack of formal and informal supports. There remains a lack of specialised supports and a dearth of evidence regarding best practice in supporting this group. This paper explores social work practices which respond to the social isolation of this cohort and the gap in support as young people transition to adulthood. The paper focuses on a group program in Queensland (Australia) which was specifically designed to support young people with a cognitive disability leaving child protection and/or youth justice systems. It reports on a subset of data from a mixed-methods study. It presents the perspectives of the young people and their practitioners regarding the practices that supported the engagement of young people and created opportunities for connection and skill development within the group program. The findings highlight the importance of relationship-driven practices that are supported and resourced by the organisation, and the need for parallel individual and group work processes for achieving positive outcomes with young people with cognitive disability transitioning from statutory systems.