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Summary: CRIN's report on the International Juvenile Justice Observatory's conference on juvenile justice.
Criminality or social exclusion: the title of this month’s conference organised by the International Juvenile Justice Observatory (IJJO) took a critical look at traditional responses to juvenile justice. By dealing with children through the penal system, do we merely create division and exclude children from society? As might be expected, the global economic crisis featured prominently in debates, as it has in all discussion on public policy in recent years. It is obviously difficult to secure resources for innovative juvenile justice projects when funds are in short supply, but nonetheless, there was a palpable sense of opportunity, a sense that a move away from punitive custodial models of justice can not only reduce offending, but save money. Cyn Yamashiro's study on the legal representation of children took just such an approach, and indicated that through the universal provisionoflegal representation under the public defender programme, Los Angeles could save millions of dollars compared to the current system and provide better legal representation for children. The use of Bar Panel lawyers for children, who are paid a flat fee for each case, has been defended as a means of keeping the expenditure for legal representation down, but Yamashiro's study indicated that those represented by the Panel rather than Public Defenders on average got significantly more punitive sentences. The clear injustice of getting longer sentences based on poor quality representation is appalling in itself, but costs saved in legal representation lead to massive expenditure on penal facilities. There was an overwhelming sense that attempts to cut costs by reducing expenditure on legal and social services for children would escalate costs as the void in services drew more children into the costly justice system, yet there was a definite sense of hope that the desire to be cost effective could force attention on the need to reform the juvenile justice system. The conference also marked the rising support for diversion as a prominent feature of the juvenile justice system. Whether in relation to preventing criminal escalation by engaging effectively with children before they commit serious offences, or in combating the justice system's potential to draw those with mental health difficulties into long term custody, justice professionals reported widely on the successes and potential benefits of diversion. The over-representation of children with mental health or learning difficulties within the justice system has been long established, as has the rejection of custodial sentences as a means to address those problems. Few would claim that prison is a therapeutic environment. Andy Bell, of the Centre for Mental Health, based in the UK, reported on the launch of six pilot youth justice liaison and diversion schemes which mushroomed into 37 schemes in 2011. The aim of the project is to keep children out of the justice system where possible, perhaps through mental health services, or, where criminal justice penalties are unavoidable, to ensure that the vulnerability of the child is taken into account. There was a note of caution, however. Defining children as outside the criminal justices system, as under Brazil's system of youth justice, does not necessarily solve the problems of youth justice. As Dr. Karyna Batista Sposato reported, during her paper on the Brazilian experience of teens in the justice system, the minimum age of criminal responsibility may be 18, but the rate of custody for children has been on the rise since 1998. Meaningful diversion from the criminal justice system is a matter of practice as well as law: reforms must ensure that when the minimum age of criminal responsibility is raised, children are not merely subject to the same penalties with different names. Day two of the conference was dominated by talk of group youth violence, specifically gangs. From the London riots of 2011, to Mexico's experience of intervention without criminalisation. Professor Newburn spoke compellingly of the inaccurate political rhetoric that placed gangs at the heart of the 2011 riots, despite the extensive evidence to the contrary, as well as the harsh custodial consequences for children involved. Meanwhile, Niamh Hourigan of University College Cork spoke of the need to address the actions that draw children into crime at young ages, calling for the criminalisation of the “grooming of children” such as the using young children as tools in drug dealing. From the comments of Maud de Boer on the first morning, that “prisons are no place for children” to the closing remarks of Frieder Dünkel, that “the best crime policy is a good welfare policy” there was consensus that a punitive approach to children in conflict with the law has failed. Yet, there was also a definite a suspicion of proposed panaceas and a sense that there are no easy answers.