Values in Youth Justice: Practice Approaches to Welfare and Justice for Young People in UK Jurisdictions (From Youth Justice Handbook: Theory, Policy and Practice, P 221-230, 2010, Wayne Taylor, Rod Earle, and Richard Hester, eds. - See NCJ-229620)

• NCJ Number: 229638
• Author(s): Bill Whyte
• Date Published: 2010
• Length: 10 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This chapter reviews and assesses the stated values that underlie policy and practice in youth justice systems in the United Kingdom (UK), followed by an overview of formal international standards that should set values and principles for the UK's youth justice systems.

Abstract

The UK's youth justice systems share a commitment to common goals that include prevention, early intervention, and better integrated and coordinated provisions for youth who commit crime; however, within the United Kingdom's various legal jurisdictions, these goals have been pursued in distinctive and contrasting ways. This chapter examines the similarities and differences in the values implemented in youth-justice practice in the UK countries of England, Wales, and Scotland. The chapter notes that all of the systems of youth justice face many ethical challenges for practitioners. The challenges stem from the combination of two concepts often characterized as the welfare and justice approaches. The welfare model is associated with child development and change through social and educational intervention rather than punishment. In contrast, the justice model assumes that children and youth above a certain age (which varies between UK countries) should be held accountable before the law for their criminal actions. Most mainland European jurisdictions deal with children who offend within a welfare system up to a designated age of transition to adolescence or adulthood, which is generally 14 or 15 years old. United Kingdom jurisdictions, based on common law, vary much more widely from European countries. Practice or prosecution guidance in the United Kingdom makes little reference to existing international standards, even though benchmarks for practice have been set by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights. This chapter recommends that youth justice systems in UK countries refer to these and other international standards in synthesizing the welfare and justice models. 16 references