Problematising Advanced Liberal Youth Crime Prevention: The Impacts of Management Reforms on Irish Garda Youth Diversion Projects

Abstract

Principles of advanced liberal youth justice policy and practice have infiltrated several jurisdictions. Reflective of these developments, this article contends that Irish youth crime prevention and diversion policy has been dominated by three central rationalities: New Public Management, deficit-based explanations of young people's behaviour and the prioritising of behaviourist types of interventions with young people. To illustrate this argument, the article analyses the Agenda of Change reform process of the multi-agency Garda Youth Diversion Projects. Paying close attention to the discursive nature of policy texts and associated technologies of government, it is suggested that advanced liberal discourses are productive of a distinctive field of youth justice work.

From behaviour-based to ecological: Multi-agency partnership responses to extra-familial harm

“…CBT, along with Motivational Interviewing, has underpinned a wide range of adapted welfare interventions for young people, including young parents (Channon et al, 2016), welfare-involved families in child protection processes (Forrester et al . , 2018) and young people on youth offending orders (Swirak, 2016) – thereby influencing not only mental health but also welfare, education and criminal services for young people.…”

“…Whilst there are important differences between these strands of theory and practice, the argument made in this article is that these nuances are overlooked in practice in favour of a ubiquitous and uncritical commitment to interventions that draw variously on each, and which unite around a desire to change the behaviour of individuals, be it through rewards and punishment and/or changing the way that they think. Critics of behaviour-based interventions draw attention to their: ‘wide use of the risk-factor prevention paradigm, the responsibilisation of young people as active and independent agents of their behaviours, as well as interventions which focus on the individual psychology (the “new behaviourism”)’ (Swirak, 2016, para. 10) .…”

“…Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) claimed a strong positivist scientific base and aligned with a policy context looking for brief, technical approaches to solving psycho-social problems (Sykes Wylie & Turner, 2011) within a Neo-liberal politics concerned with individual choice and responsibility (Harris, 2014). CBT, along with Motivational Interviewing, has underpinned a wide range of adapted welfare interventions for young people, including young parents (Channon et al, 2016), welfare-involved families in child protection processes (Forrester et al, 2018) and young people on youth offending orders (Swirak, 2016) thereby influencing not only mental health but also welfare, education and criminal services for young people.…”

‘Vulnerable’ Kids Going Country: Children and Young People’s Involvement in County Lines Drug Dealing

“…Young people involved in county lines may, however, be criminalised rather than safeguarded, and their complex needs and risks may not be recognised (Sturrock and Holmes, 2015). This may partly reflect the British Government’s increasingly conservative and punitive youth justice approach, which tends to ignore or downplay structural conditions facilitating youth offending while assuming rational choice as the main explanatory factor for offending, therefore shifting the entire responsibility for these choices on to them (Ellis, 2018; Swirak, 2016). It may also be because abstract concepts of vulnerability and exploitation can be difficult to identify in practice, especially when police officers and other frontline youth justice workers are under-resourced (Haines and Case, 2018) and lack sufficient training in identifying and dealing with the issues these young people present.…”

Strategic Offending: Colombia’s Part-Time Child Drug Traffickers and Their Community, City and Country Lines

“…Windle et al (2020) have noted how young people involved in drug trafficking tend to be criminalised rather than safeguarded. There is a tendency to 'downplay structural conditions facilitating youth offending' (Windle et al, 2020: 72; see also Ellis, 2018;Swirak, 2016), often examined through the lens of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). It is important to highlight, however, that what might constitute ACEs in developed countries often define the everyday experience for youth in the developing world.…”