Desistance Approaches in Youth Justice - the Next Passing Fad or a Sea-change for the Positive?
Research in Practice
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
This research examines how well the strengths-based desistance approach in youth justice has been rolled out in practice and makes suggestions for areas of improvement.
Authors Kathy S Hampson
Published in Youth Justice, Volume 18, Issue 1 (2017)
This research examines how well the strengths-based desistance approach in youth justice has been rolled out in practice and makes suggestions for areas of improvement.
A risk-oriented youth justice model has dominated the system in England and Wales, resulting in a massive influx of young people entering the youth justice system. Research by McAra and McVie (2010) suggests that entering the system can lead to further offending. These concerns have led to changes, which have reduced the numbers of young people accessing the system; however rates of reoffending are still rising, according to Youth Justice Board (YJB) and Ministry of Justice figures published in 2016.
An alternative to the risk-oriented approach is the desistance approach. Desistance can be measured from different points in someone's change journey, but most meaningfully when they no longer conceive of themselves as a criminal and maintain ceasing offending (secondary desistance). A desistance-led approach was established first in the adult criminal justice sector and has also been rolled out in youth justice through the YJB's AssetPlus framework since 2014.
Pathways to ceasing offending may be different for adults and children and the majority of young people who have offended do not necessarily continue to offend into adulthood (Loeber and Farrington, 2014). Developing maturity and holding less-fixed identities than adults may influence this. Desistance-focused practice is strengths-based and seeks to address the barriers to ceasing offending (Nugent and Barnes, 2013) by supporting the young person to change by:
- Developing self-esteem and hope through relationships between young people and practitioners.
- Cognitive transformation, which aims to reduce opportunities for people to self-identify as an offender.
- Societal inclusion and social capital, with access to opportunities that are available to non-offending young people.
- Action plans towards personal and long-term goals.
The study conducted a desistance-focused examination of AssetPlus in practice, which included analysing assessments and intervention plans across three youth offending team (YOT) areas in Wales and evaluated training in desistance, which was attended by 185 practitioners in varied roles.
Study findings:
AssetPlus assessments and plans showed that:
- Youth justice practitioners were not able to successfully apply desistance theory:
- Strengths were mentioned but were lost at an early stage in the assessment narrative and were not identified in the "factors for desistance section".
- Barriers were persistently presented in sections which only required positives.
- Nearly twice as many "factors against desistance" were listed than those "for".
- Risk-focused assessments resulted in deficit-focused intervention plans which:
- Centred on doing work about offending.
- Lacked meaningful work towards reaching personal goals or accessing community opportunities/resources.
- No mention of building the worker-young person relationship.
Although many staff had received AssetPlus training before, they ranked their pre-training knowledge as quite poor. Post-training knowledge increased and the training was evaluated as useful, particularly in relation to the importance of using positive strengths and goals, and also relationship-building. Participants reported that this would be useful in helping them to complete better assessments in future.
Implications for practice
- There is a need to move away from a risk-focused youth justice structure to one that is strengths-based. This applies not only to YOT workers, but also other youth justice professionals (magistrates, managers at all levels and referral order panellists). All staff need to receive long-term support to better understand and implement this approach.
- The YJB could better align AssetPlus intervention plans with desistance values through using a strengths-based perspective and including the importance of building good worker/young person relationships. For example, two areas for goal creation are "not offending" and "not hurting others", and these could be reframed.
- All YJB inspection reports should reflect the desistance approach in order to avoid mixed messages and ensure YOTs can develop a desistance-based agenda.
- Statistical returns for YOTs need to model that relapse is part of the desistance process.
The research section for this special report is based on a selection of academic studies which have been explored and summarised by Research in Practice, part of the Dartington Hall Trust