Kevin Haines

Understanding youth offending: Risk factor research, policy and practice

Introduction: Risk Factor Research 1. Examining the Unresolved Methodological Paradoxes of Risk Factor Research 2. The Origins and Development of Risk Factor Research 3. Longitudinal Risk Factor Research in England and Wales - Achievements, Limitations and Potential 4. Cross-sectional Risk Factor Research in England and Wales - Achievements, limitations and Potential 5. Hunting for the Universal Risk Factor 6. Risk Assessment in the Youth Justice System: Application without Understanding? 7. Re-visiting Risk Factor Research, Policy and Practice

Positive Youth Justice: Children First, Offenders Second

Introduction: A Children First, Offenders Second philosophy of positive youth justice Chapter One: Positive Youth Justice - Introducing Children First, Offenders Second Chapter Two: What is Children First, Offenders Second? Chapter Three: The context of Children First, Offenders Second positive youth justice - Evolution through devolution Chapter Four: Putting children first in the Youth Justice System Chapter Five: Progressive Diversion Chapter Six - Progressive Prevention-Promotion Chapter Seven - Conclusion

Is the Scaled Approach a Failed Approach

This article evaluates the ‘Scaled Approach’ to youth justice adopted in England and Wales, compared with the ‘Children First’ approach adopted in Swansea. Using Youth Justice Board reconviction data, comparisons are made between the performance of the Scaled Approach pilot areas, Children First and all other Youth Offending Teams in England and Wales. Data indicates wide variability and inconsistency of practice across Youth Offending Teams, including the pilot areas. The Children First model emerges as a promising method of reducing reconviction rates, whereas the Scaled Approach (applied assiduously) has unintended negative consequences. Implications for youth justice assessment policy and practice are discussed.

Children First, Offenders Second Positive Promotion: Reframing the Prevention Debate

This article explores the concept of ‘prevention’ in youth justice, which is dominated by negative, retrospective, risk-focused, offender-first approaches that individualise the causes of offending by children and responsibilise children for failing to resist and negotiate these causes. We offer an alternative ‘prevention’ model that prioritises the promotion of positive behaviours and outcomes for children. Children First, Offenders Second positive promotion is grounded in child-friendly principles of universalism, diversion and normalisation, progressed through inclusionary, participatory and legitimate practice and evidenced through measurable behaviours and outcomes such as engagement with youth justice processes and access to universal entitlements.

Promoting Prevention: preventing youth drug use in Swansea, UK, by targeting risk and protective factors

The multi‐agency, multiple‐intervention Promoting Prevention initiative aims to prevent drug use and youth offending in Swansea. It was evaluated using a computer‐based interactive questionnaire with 580 young people aged 11–18 years. Results indicate that exposure to risk factors within the main domains of the young persons life (family, school, neighbourhood, psychological) significantly increases the likelihood that they will ever become involved in drug use (‘ever takers’), whilst ever takers are three times more likely to offend than young people who have never taken an illicit drug (‘never takers’). The evaluation indicates that Promoting Preventions cross‐cutting, consultative and risk‐focused methodology is an effective way of targeting interventions to prevent and reduce drug use among young people in Swansea.

Promoting Positive Behaviour in Schools: The Youth Social Audit

Local monitoring in Swansea, Wales has identified a strong link between school exclusion and youth offending. This precipitated the establishment of the Promoting Positive Behaviour (PPB) initiative. A questionnaire based on the Mooney Problem Checklist (MPCL) was completed by 162 (124 control and 38 experimental) Year 10 and Year 11 pupils in Swansea. The research investigated differences in the extent of problems experienced by pupils who had been excluded from school and those who had not. Results show that pupils in Swansea who have been excluded report a range of problems at higher levels than non-excluded pupils. This indicates that PPB’s focus upon reducing disaffection and maintaining young people in schools may ameliorate problems and prevent associated problem behaviours such as offending.

Factors shaping substance use by young people in Wales

This paper examines the prevalence of, frequency of and factors underpinning, substance use by young people. The research augments previous exploration of the causes of youth drug use by integrating factor analysis into traditional statistical techniques to identify composite risk factors for different forms of drug use (any drugs, soft drugs, hard drugs, inhalants) by the youth population in Wales. The existing risk‐focused research literature is further extrapolated through detailed investigation of the relative salience of risk factors by specific gender and age group in the Welsh sample. Reported drug use by the whole sample and specific sub‐groups generally accorded with the findings of previous research with equivalent age groups in Wales, the UK and Europe. Those factors exerting the most influence upon youth drug use were: anti‐social behaviour/attitudes, drug‐related behaviour/attitudes, negative thinking, psychological problems and behavioural problems. This study affords a first tentative step on the road to a more comprehensive and sensitive exploration of the role of composite risk factors in drug taking behaviour by young people. Findings imply the need for comprehensive, multi‐dimensional drug prevention programmes addressing multiple and composite risk factors, targeted appropriately upon specific sub‐groups of the youth population.

Measuring Young People’s Participation in Decision Making

Young people are frequently exhorted to participate ‘more’ in decision making, both formally and informally. Paradoxically, no standard or comprehensively used measurement tool through which young people’s right to participate in decision making exists. However, a range of participation scales have been developed and these mainly adult-generated tools feature prominently in literature, impacting upon, and informing policy and participative practice. Yet, despite the emphasis on young people’s right to participate in those things which affect them, including how their participation is measured, examples of young person-generated approaches to understanding the extent of their decision making are somewhat elusive. Drawing upon research undertaken in Swansea to explore how young people thought their participation in decision making should be measured, this article focuses and reflects upon the development of an appropriate, participative methodology, the views which young people offered through the enquiry, and the construction of a new participation measurement scale.

Promoting Prevention: A Multi-agency Initiative to Prevent Youth Offending Through Consultation in Swansea Schools

The purpose of this article is to set out Swansea’s response to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and related matters, which encompasses an explicitly universal, positive and young person-focused approach to crime prevention. This stands in contrast to more controlling or punitive practices developed elsewhere. Research into the multi-agency, multiple intervention Promoting Prevention programme has utilised an interactive, computer-based questionnaire with young people aged 11-15 to identify risk and protective factors associated with youth offending in Swansea. This has enabled the Promoting Prevention steering group to begin to target appropriate interventions to reduce and prevent youth offending, as reflected in the decrease in official offending locally.

Ecological Youth Justice: Understanding the Social Ecology of Young People’s Prolific Offending

This article outlines a social-ecological approach to understanding young people’s prolific offending and effective youth justice responses to it. Seeing young people through the lens of interactions and relationships – with family, peers, community and the broader socio-cultural-political context – gives insight into the type of interventions that can most effectively disrupt their offending and enhance their wellbeing. These insights have implications for the way in which youth offending teams engage with young people, in their social context, to bring about positive change in their lives. Effective interventions, we argue, focus on engaging young people in normalising relationships, over time.