Why theoretical literacy is essential for forensic research and practice

Challenging the Reductionism of “Evidence-Based” Youth Justice

“…The inter-related neo-liberal strategies of responsibilisation and correctionalism enabled Western governments, working in tandem with a hegemonic group of developmentally minded academic researchers [2], to simultaneously blame children (often disproportionately) for their own exposure to criminogenic influences and to restrict the empirical lens of evidence generation to individualised factors. The corollary of this deliberate reduction of the explanatory evidence-base was the downplaying of the complexity involved in exploring the impact of a broader range of contextual criminogenic factors-structural, political, economic (to compound matters, there is also a history in criminological research and its associated "evidence-based" risk assessment tools of reconstructing and reducing macro influences such as socio-economic deprivation and social marginalisation as individualised risk factors [43,44], cultural, historical, interactional and situational influences [3,23,45] Therefore, a paradox of reductionism began to shape the application of EBP internationally-a necessary, yet potentially invalidating (over) simplification of explanations of offending that offered "an ostensibly neat and coherent approach to the messy and ill-defined complexities of practice" [33].…”

“…. [and] social and physical contextual factors" [3]. Youth justice research evidence generation has been rendered even more reductionist in explanatory terms by the oversimplified outcome measures of risk assessment tools (e.g., binary measures of reoffending and risk exposure), with limited sensitivity to offence seriousness, frequency, duration etc or consideration of alternative (non-risk) measures of effectiveness (e.g., increases to positive outcomes).…”

“…. virtually none of them acknowledge their problematic theoretical status" [3] The deterministic and partial nature of the hegemonic, risk-informed evidence-base generated by contemporary youth justice practice in England and Wales exemplifies and perpetuates the reductionism of youth justice research. Privileging and replicating artefactual RFR evidence of "dynamic" (malleable) risk factors to populate explanations of and responses to offending by children has been asserted to increase the robustness and utility of the youth justice evidence-base.…”

“…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?…”

“…Youth justice) also known as "juvenile justice" in certain international jurisdictions beyond the United Kingdom) isa concept/label which encapsulates the systems, structures, strategies, processes, organisations and professionals that collectively contribute to the planning and delivery of official responses to offending by children [2]. Across this international field empirical research evidence has become an integral means of complementing and extending the knowledge and understanding of offending offered by the official enquiries and data collection of professional stakeholders and an essential tool for informing "evidence-based" policy, practice and "effective intervention" [3]. Indeed, at the turn of the century, the Chief Social Researcher's Office of the UK Government asserted that "putting the best available evidence from research at the heart of policy development and implementation [enables] well informed decisions about policies, programs and projects" [4].…”