This week the Transition to Adulthood Alliance launched its policy paper on young adults and the criminal justice system. Our report is not meant to be a panacea for young adult crime but it is meant to inject insight and creativity into an area of policy making that is simply not working. 18 to 24 year olds commit a third of all crime, represent a third of all people sentenced to prison each year, and make up a third of Britain’s probation caseload. For a group that only makes up about 10% of the population this is a worrying set of statistics. Yet the way the state deals with young adults has hardly changed since the 1960s.
Our paper ‘A New Start: Young Adults and the Criminal Justice System’ aims to offer new policies to help marginalised young adults move away from crime and into productive lives. We also hope to persuade policy makers of the need to see 18-24 year olds as a unique group who are neither children nor fully matured adults. To be sure, the Labour government has worked hard to improve the lives of young people in Britain – investment in projects such as SureStart should not be ignored and the government’s record on under 18 youth crime is also going in the right direction. But for 18-24 year olds the current government has followed its predecessors in simply not tailoring policies to address the needs of young adults at the most critical period of their lives.
We have outlined 21 policies covering policing and community involvement; sentencing and the courts; custody and community; work and education; health, housing and social care; and drugs and alcohol. When it comes to the police we argue that officers on the beat need to adopt a triage approach whereby they can offer young adults support and direct them to local services and community based activities rather than simply engaging with them when they are suspected of a crime. Alienation amongst marginalised young adults often starts with the police and we have to change the culture of interaction between young adults and the people meant to protect their streets. But our paper primarily deals with young adults who may have already become involved with the criminal justice system.
No one is in any doubt that young adult offenders should be punished for their crime. However, instead of continuing on a rigidly punitive path we have to start rethinking the way we deal with young adult offenders otherwise we will continue to condemn generation after generation to a life of crime. With this in mind, our paper calls for far more constructive punishment. When sentencing young adults we are calling for magistrates and higher courts to take into account the ‘youhtfullness’ of the offender who in legal terms may be seen as a fully matured adult. Furthermore, if a prison sentence is deemed unavoidable we are calling for young adults to be kept separate from adult prisoners. At present once an offender reaches 18 if sentenced they are sent to an adult prison rather than a Young Offender Institute effectively consigning them to a university of crime where they learn from their older peers.
We also need to rethink the way offenders are reintroduced to society. At present over two thirds of young offenders go on to re-offend within two years. We have to look at the reasons behind this. Invariably young adult offenders point to a lack of support in getting accommodation, a lack of help from the state for health problems, and most critically the huge obstacles they face in getting a job so that they no longer have to turn to crime. Our paper highlights ways in which all these issues can be addressed. Policy makers should take heed because at present the punitive approach to dealing with young adult offenders is serving neither the victims nor the perpetrators of crime.
The T2A Alliance is convened by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, a full list of its members can be found here. The Alliance is now calling for feedback on its 21 policy proposals and Progress readers can leave their comments here.
