Punishing Poverty: The ‘Scaled Approach’ and Youth Justice Practice

Abstract

The 'scaled approach', which provides the framework for determining levels of intervention for children in conflict with the law in England and Wales, might be seen as a logical culmination of the penetration of youth justice by a risk-averse policy and practice. This article questions the extent to which the model is compliant with children's human rights and argues that constructing intervention through the lens of risk is likely to be incompatible with the effective engagement of children in trouble.

Challenging the Reductionism of “Evidence-Based” Youth Justice

“…The Scaled Approach effectively formalised evidential reductionism in the YJS by consolidating risk (fac-tors) as the primary conceptual and explanatory animator of youth justice policy and practice that was largely bereft of a robust theoretical foundation or philosophical/principled core. However, the framework has been criticised for its uncritical use of aggregation, which "inevitably imposes limits on the accuracy" of these predictions [74], which reduces understanding of the risk profiles and life experiences of individual children (the "ecological fallacy") and which potentially invalidates any proposed intervention [75]. Intervention validity was further reduced by the Scaled Approach's inherent partiality-privileging individualised, psychosocial interventions as responses to assessed psychosocial risk factors (the focus of Asset assessment), so "attention is drawn away from structural, social inequalities for which government itself has some responsibility" [30].…”

“…The methodological/practical side effect is ecological fallacy, whereby unsupported and potentially invalid statistical inferences are made about the nature of individual children based on the (risk) profile of the group to which they belong. Additionally, representing individuals through aggregated risk categories may well facilitate better estimates of risk of reoffending, but may also do little to aid understanding of the causes of this offending and thus to guide interventions and treatments [3]; • Definity-advocates of RFR have confidently disseminated definite, clear-cut, evidencebased "explanations" predicated on indefinite, unspecific and inconsistent definitions and understandings of central concepts [30,74]. There remains ambiguity and lack of empirical consensus, even within the artefactual RFR community, over the nature of "risk factors" an explanatory concept (e.g., variously understood as causes, predictors, indicators, correlates, symptoms) and their relationship with offending (e.g., deterministic or probabilistic?…”

Applying Sen’s Capabilities Approach to the Delivery of Positive Youth Justice

“…The social and YJ policies of the WG reflect this conception of children who offend as having diminished responsibility and different needs when compared to adults and so the treatment of children who offend (or are ‘at risk’ of offending) has changed (Haines and Case, 2015; Williams and Llywelyn, 2016). First, children are diverted away from the formal criminal justice system (prosecution and court) in favour of community-based mechanisms (Bateman, 2011, 2017; Bateman et al, 2018; Haines and Case, 2015). Second, diversionary measures have been developed within the formal YJS so that even when a child is prosecuted and convicted the types of interventions used are aimed at helping children to ‘reintegrate’ with their community, they are normalised (Haines and Case, 2015).…”

The Governmental Topologies of Database Devices

“…Неолиберальные стратегии оказались подвергнуты массированной критике, но при этом недостаточно внимания было уделено тому, как базы данных и новая 1 Эта критика была направлена против практики определения групп риска ювенальной юстицией и приведения их в соответствие с уникальными обстоятельствами индивида. Практика, названная «масштабированным подходом», была описана Бейтманом [Bateman, 2011]. Оценка риска основана в этом случае не столько на том, что вы совершили, сколько на том, что вы могли бы совершить.…”

“…Например, Бейтман[Bateman, 2011] описывает, как Asset устройство хранения данных по делам ювенальной юстиции, собирает различные метрики о подростках для создания групп риска -для тех, кто может совершить первое повторное преступление. Незначительные изменения в метриках могут существенно менять количество подростков, попадающих в ту или иную категорию, в результате чего в оценках может наблюдаться значительный разброс.…”