This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more

Law Notes Criminology Notes

Youth Justice Notes

Updated Youth Justice Notes

Criminology Notes

Criminology

Approximately 610 pages

Criminology notes fully updated for recent exams at Oxford and Cambridge. These notes cover all the LLB Criminology law cases and so are perfect for anyone doing an LLB in the UK or a great supplement for those doing LLBs abroad, whether that be in Ireland, Hong Kong or Malaysia (University of London).

These were the best Criminology notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through dozens of LLB samples from outstanding law students with the highes...

Available here

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Criminology Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Chapter 8: ‘Treating Children Differently’ (Eatson and Piper, 2012)

  • The ways in which, and the extent to which, the state deals differently with children and young ppl under 18 who commit crimes.

  • Policies over the last century to divert minors from prosecution include cautioning, reprimands, warnings and the new youth conditional caution.

  • Key elements of the youth justice system set out by Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (CDA).

A separate system

  • Art 40 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - lays down principles of diff treatment for children - defined as being under 18. it endorses diversion away from the CJS.

  • UK ratified it in 1991, but there has been for a long time before this a separate system for dealing with children who offend.

  • The long-standing policy aim of ensuring that formal processes are child-friendly and that where poss criminal proceedings are avoided stems from our ideas about children development - fears for their 'contamination' by adult offenders.

Offending by minors

  • 1998 MORI survey of 11-16 year olds found that only 70% of children could say with certainty that they had not committed an offence in the prev 15 months - but the MORI Youth Survey (2008) showed that the overall proportion of young people reporting that they'd committed an offence in the prev 12 months had declined compared to prev surveys.

  • Peak ages for offending are from 15-20yrs old, 2005 stats of recorded indictable offences suggested peak age of 17 for males and 15 for females.

  • Youth Justice Board (2009) - girls involved in offending for a shorter period, commit fewer offences, and commit less serious offences, than boys.

The offenders: who and why?

  • Factors associated with offending show that young offenders are marginalised young ppl - with a range of problems that require medical, social work or educational responses.

  • Goldson (1999) - argues that 'it's well estab'd that the social circs of children in trouble, 'young offenders' are invariably scarred by complex configurations and multiple interrelated forms of disadvantage'.

  • Berman (2011) - 47% of male sentenced prisoners and 50% of female sentenced prisoners had run away as a child - vs 10% of the general pop.

Over 25% of prisoners had been taken into care as a child vs 2% of general pop.

  • The idea that responsibility and culpability should be mitigated has more force in its application to young offenders - they do not have the capability and independence to rise above their circs and propensities to offend can be more easily 'treated' when the offender's young.

England riots 2011 - Home Office (2011)

  • Used notions of 'nudge' factors which facilitated involvement and 'tug' factors which inhibited involvement.

  • These official stats rebutted the common belief that the riots were result of gang culture - onlt 13% of arrestees were affiliated to a gang.

  • The report included the following findings which bears out the links btw offending and deprivation:

  1. 35% of adult defendants were claiming unemployment benefits compared to 12% of the working age population.

  2. 42% of young people brought before the courts had free school meals during their time at school - compared to only 16% in maintained secondary schools.

  3. 64% of those young people lived in one of the most 20 deprived areas in the country - only 3% lived in one of the 20 least deprived areas.

  • Home Office report on the riots - 'nudge' and 'tug' factors.

Facilitators (nudge factors) Inhibitors (tug factors)
situational

Group processes swept along by power of the group, seeing others

get away with it, feeling anonymous

Group processes: actively thinking towards future goals and not

focusing on the 'here and now'
situational Peer pressure: friends getting involved Peer pressure: friends not involved
situational Information: seeing it on TV, getting texts/fb/BBM messages Information: didn’t get any msgs, not watching TV
situational Circumstances: not otherwise occupied, was easy/nearby to go Circumstances: more difficult to get to - further away, no buses
situational

Presence of authority figure: no adult telling them not to, everybody

doing it and nobody seemed to be getting caught

Presence of authority figure: parents, relatives or youth workers

telling them not to
individual Previous criminal activity Previous criminal activity: been caught once so know the risks
individual

Attitudes towards authority: cynicism/anger towards politicians,

authority, neg experience of the police.

 Attitudes towards authority: no neg experience of the police
individual Prospects: poor job prospects, low income, low hope for the future Prospects: in work or expectations of work, aspirations - a lot to lose

Family/

community

 Family attitudes: relatives not disapproving Family attitudes: disapproving - 'not brought up like that'

Family/

community

Community: attachment to a community with a culture of low-lvl

criminality

Community: attachment to a community with pro-social values/

culture (including religious communities)
societal Belonging: little sense of ownership or stake in society Belonging: sense of a stake in society
societal

Poverty and materialism: desire for material goods but no way of

paying for them

The Welfare Principle

  • s.44 Children and Young Persons Act 1933 estab'd that courts must 'have regard to' the welfare of the child: a mandatory statutory requirement to ensure that children have been given at least a modicum of special treatment when appearing in a court, partic when appearing in a Youth or Crown Court.

  • Under s.10(4) and (5) of the Children Act 2004 a youth offending team (YOT) is one of the authorities which is a 'relevant provider of a children's services authority in England' and therefore under a duty to co-operate with the authority in making relevant arrangements. s.10(2) - authorities must make arrangements:

With a view to improving the...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Criminology Notes.

More Criminology Samples