Reflections on the Youth Justice System

As a bit player in the criminal justice system, I sit on referral order panels for young offenders, I often find myself reflecting on the sentences handed down by magistrates and I wonder what they hope to achieve when they issue referral orders. And I do this in the context of a sociology essay I wrote nearly forty years ago as an undergraduate.

I don’t have the essay to hand but it was on the purposes of punishment and dealt with notions of retribution, reparation and rehabilitation. In my experience as a panel member, the victim, especially in cases of crimes of violence, is seeking retribution. They’ve been hurt and they want to hurt back. In rather primitive terms, they are looking for revenge on a sort of eye for an eye basis.

The community on the other hand, and as panel members my colleagues and I may loosely be said to represent the community, is looking for some sort of reparation. The victim sometimes is also looking for reparation, either directly or indirectly. Reparation in the sense of making good, the offender being required to ‘make good’ the damage he or she has caused to the victim directly or to the community in a wider sense.

Those professionals working within the criminal justice system are focused on rehabilitation, they take a longer view and are trying to ensure the young offender understands and learns from the damage, hurt, or whatever, he or she has caused and is predisposed never to repeat the offence or in any other way come into contact with the criminal justice system again.

So retribution, reparation and rehabilitation, all understandable if not all laudable aims of sentencing, but are they all achievable to an equal degree? The answer to this question has to be – rarely. So it really comes down to a question of balance, to try to devise an order that firstly, allows the victim to feel that they have obtained a sense of justice; secondly, to persuade the offender that he/she must do something constructive for the victim or community that enhances their understanding of the consequences of their misdemeanours; and thirdly, to ensure that help and support is provided so that there is no question of re-offending. It’s a very difficult balancing act, but one I feel would be made easier if more people properly understood the workings of the criminal justice system and were more willing to engage with it and actively support it in whatever way they feel is appropriate to them.

Perhaps this is really a message to Ken Clarke, the Justice Minister. If your ‘Big Society’ is to mean anything, you have to find innovative ways for many more people to become actively involved in the workings of criminal justice system and by doing so they will support that system because they understand it rather than criticise it because they don’t.