The New Labour. Young People and Youth Offending - Book Report/Review Example

Young People and Youth Offending The day when the 'New Labour' swept into power, political events and issues such as divorce law reform, the implementation of European Union directives on weights and measures, and the progress of the Northern Ireland 'peace process' initiated with new policies and procedures irrespective of the notion that there may not have been important positive effects on the policies for the British society in the long term (Denver et al, 1998, p. 15). The 'New Labour' attempted to develop a theoretical framework for a social policy of youth and with a reason to describe the ways in which the condition of youth has been substantially transformed in the last quarter of the twentieth century reshaped the youth policy due to which Britain developed a large piecemeal in an uncoordinated way, with each different Department of State addressing only those aspects of "youth problems" which it sees as falling within its domain. This was counteracted by many critics for having called for a Minister for Youth to co-ordinate better the disparate activities of various arms of government, while others argued for a more holistic approach to the study of youth to be made by academic researchers, policy makers and practitioners (Jones & Wallace, 1992). The academic study of youth certainly has mirrored state policy in its uncoordinated and "atomistic" approach, with separate branches of the social sciences focusing on different facets of young people's lives. The problems of youth were highlighted, while social work focused on the issue of child protection and caring for children. The social inequalities of educational attainment and the problems of transition from school to work were dominated under the reign of New Labour Government. Compared to the nebulous concept of youth, the Government find it easier to mould the social policy pertinent to the study of welfare and welfare systems and the ways in which systems of welfare do, or do not, meet human needs. Although the discipline of social policy to the New Labour Government proved to be an applied social science where they felt the need to draw upon youth sociology in the context of addressing youth welfare issues, but the New Labour Reforms in context with the Youth Justice System lacked the approach which their predecessors adopted. It is for this reason why the New Labour has been tugged into critical controversial issues that otherwise had not been associated with them. Youth Education vs. Offending in Crimes While initiating the persuasion of 'statist/anti-statist' strategy, Criminal Justice Bills were restructured in order to strengthen the power of the state for intense intervention and that was achieved by the New Labour by tending the Bills downward toward the powerless. The powerful laws were not even moved from their place or ever scrutinised. This downward gaze was pursued in two ways. First, the New Labour continued to consolidate Howard's policies in a range of areas like that of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 that was introduced by Howard was successfully implemented by Straw in December 1999. This act severely discouraged youth offending and allowed mandatory life sentences for young offenders who were charged for a sexual or violent crime the second time. Those youngsters who are convicted in trafficking of class 'A' drugs are subjected to seven-year imprisonment (Sim, 2000). There are many typical experiences of students who despite populating degrees in Britain indulge in the struggle to obtain a full-time degree alongside part-time jobs and domestic responsibilities. New Labour not even bothered about that factor that along with the white students were some (African Caribbean and Asian) exceptions. The policies took a few years for these 'failures' of the schooling system to pick up courage and find out about appropriate courses which might accept them (Vincent, 2003, p. 69). Most of the British political discourses between interest groups, political and economic leaders, and the people crucially concerned parents and their children it was an accepted conviction that technological, economic, and social developments lead to the extent where there was an increased demand for higher qualifications and that more education had positive pay-offs. For many years, there was an observable tendency for highly qualified jobs to grow in number, while many of the unqualified jobs disappeared. Such beliefs in a general increase in the demand for qualifications were widely shared, as was the resolve of political actors to respond to the growing demand for education with various means of fostering educational expansion. Nowhere was there any serious opposition to enhance the provision of education, while on the other hand New Labour was able to introduce a raft of legislation that derived from his own views concerning how law and order should be maintained. Youngsters were focussed in accordance with the Crime and Disorder Act (CDA). If there was any disagreement, it was about the extent of expansion. Quite clearly, politicians and governments were less unanimous about changing, say, the unequal distribution of education among population groups. In this latter respect, there was only a broad consensus on the need to equalize educational participation for men and women. But there were many examples of political opposition to reforms designed to reduce the unequal distribution of education among social classes or among other groups with unequal participation in education. Political perceptions differed in the extent to which the concern to equalize educational participation found support in the political arena and response in the form of efficient measures for the realization of greater equality. To the extent of stressing upon educational needs, the New Labour was right, but when it came to youth delinquency, it failed to realize what actually needed to be done in order to alleviate youth crime. The New Labour was well aware that the increased educational participation was quite universal and showed that the reduction of social inequality in educational participation made less progress and was not achieved at all (Jonsson et al. 1996). The New Labour juxtaposed the educational academics with the crime control policies which provided the opportunity to the academics to start mourning the demise of criminology as a discipline where the size of the crime control industry experienced a rapid growth. In England and Wales the official annual cost of crime control in 2001 stood at 8.2 billion, and this was projected to increase to 10.6 billion by 2003-4. These costs do not, of course, include the millions of pounds that were spent by the political organisations every year by private individuals and commercial organisations (Sim, 2000). On one hand Britain was able to analyse the growing number of people studying criminology as a function of the massive increase in media time dedicated to crime and punishment and, on the other hand, a result of the increased likelihood of employment within the burgeoning criminal justice industry. Thus, it seemed to the outsiders as if there were debates in criminology expressing a sense of exhaustion in relation to the subject area. Critiques to the New Labour The uncertainty over the status of criminology by the New Labour Government on one hand emphasised upon educational needs while on the other intensified the result of a series of debates which took place over the past two decades questioning the proper object of enquiry of criminology. This was from advocates of youth victimology, radical and critical criminology and from feminist criminologists. The initiatives taken by the Government initiated interest in the various victimology movements which changed the primary focus from the offender to the victim and in the process drew attention to the limitations of purely offender-based criminology. Then there was a second level of critique which came from radical criminologists who took issue with what they saw as the unduly narrow focus of conventional criminology, which paid relatively little attention to white-collar crime, corporate crime and crimes of the state. Together, these new radical and anti-criminologists demanded a fundamental review of the established agenda of criminological investigation, particularly where it was seen to deny progressive and emancipatory interests. The third level of critique was from those feminists that believed that youth delinquency lacks gender neutrality and suggested that there must be the assumptions of gender neutrality implicit in major criminological theories misguided. Traditional criminology was found guilty of being andocentric and gender biased. Moreover, it was argued that New Labour failed to recognise many key issues in criminology that had been neglected by male researchers or defined in masculinise terms and that these issues required investigation from a feminist standpoint (Matthews & Pitts, 2001, p. 2). New Labour's Third Way The 'Third Way' provided the opportunity to the Labour Government to practice a term which has both sociological and academic currency as an analysis of the 'modern times' in which we live (Giddens, 2000) and political currency as a banner under which an evolving set of 'new' political ideas with associated programmes of action coalesce (Blair, 1998). The Third Way referred to the construction of a political agenda in response to, what was then perceived to be, profound changes unfolding across the world. Critics believe that traditional politics remained inadequate to respond to the contemporary needs, including required responses to cultural diversity, scientific and technological change, globalisation and ecological concerns. Therefore the issue of youth crime remained too far ahead of the Government to tackle effectively. This went a long way to fulfil contemporary conditions which caused a transformation in and blurring of, traditional political boundaries, as many issues cut across the Left-Right divide. Hence, the Third Way sought a social analysis and political response which goes 'beyond the Left and Right'. The straight forward approach to the Third Way as identified by Anthony Giddens and Tony Blair represents a quest to transcend social democracy, on the one hand, which looks to the state for answers, and neo-liberalism, on the other hand, which looks to the market for solutions. It was argued that whilst neo-liberals historically have wanted to shrink the state, social democrats were keen to expand it, however neither of the two realised that what is necessary is the reconstruction of a 'new democratic state' (Giddens, 2000, p. 70). The debate is that whether the reformed state would be able to establish a new relationship between risk and security or not. Despite the notion that the Third Way accepts anxieties and worries about civil decline as both real and tangible within many sectors of contemporary societies, not just the inventions of conservative politicians or the media, it has neglected British youth. Apart from solving the youth delinquency issue, the loss of a sense of community, weakening sociability, urban decline, fear of crime and the break-up of marriages and families are seen as real problems needing to be addressed by the Third Way. However, as Giddens suggests, "it is just as wrong to reduce civic decline to economics, as the old left often did, as to deny the influence of poverty and underprivileged" (Giddens, 2000, p. 79) Crime and Disorder Act Evidence and evaluation for policy and practice remained in vogue for the New Labour party. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was criticised for saying that what counts is what works, and that the current Labour government is committed to evidence-led policy. The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) needed an in-depth overview of the reasons that lead youngsters towards crime, the issue required collaboration to assemble evidence to determine priorities for tackling this problem. Instead of monitoring and evaluating their efforts to tackle local crime and disorder problems, the Government initiated various crime reduction programs of which the government's three-year 250 million Crime Reduction Programme, announced in 1998 and begun in 1999, followed from a Home Office report for the Comprehensive Spending review (Goldblatt and Lewis, 1998). It also summarised those evidences on which the Government was based upon to what had been found to work, or to be promising, in reducing crime. Ten per cent of the 250 million is due to be spent on evaluation research. A huge investment was followed by the reports of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) which collaborated with the police work in crime reduction and of the Audit Commission on Local Authority Community Safety work stress the need for evaluation and evidence (Audit Commission, 1999). Traditional patterns of service delivery were no longer to be taken for granted. Evidence-based justifications were required. The probation service was clearly being steered towards a set of interventions for which there was some evidence of effectiveness, and probation services were being asked to measure their own effectiveness (Chapman and Hough, 1998). Problem-oriented policing gained significance over traditional policing thereby making it clear that traditional one will no longer do. Reaction from the Communities New Labour's Community safety strategy initiated an efficient and effective youth justice system, to which Section 37 of its Crime and Disorder Act (1998) states that "It shall be the principal aim of the Youth Justice system to prevent offending by children and young persons" (Home Office 1998, p. 2). The Youth Justice Task Force which was established just after the 1997 General Election, recommended that the goal to provide justice to the youth could best be achieved via the swift administration of justice. This aim initiated many policies confronted by the young offenders with the consequences of their offending; punishment proportionate to the seriousness and persistence of their offending; the reparation of victims; the enforcement of parental responsibility; and the provision of relevant help in areas deemed to be associated with offending, such as drug abuse and literacy. The 'Youth Justice' Act required chief executives of local British authorities to bring into attention Youth Offending Programs staffed by personnel seconded from behalf of the police, the probation service, education, social services, and the health service. Even in certain instances, the youth service or other relevant voluntary sector agencies if this were deemed appropriate were required to produce a Youth Offending Plan specifying how the team would organise and discharge its functions, and how it would liaise with other statutory and voluntary bodies (Matthews & Pitts, 2001, p. 68). The development of the youth offending programs were supervised and managed under the guidance of the Act which established the Youth Justice Board of England and Wales (YJB). According to the Government the YJB has remained effective enough to assume management responsibility for what is now termed the Secure Estate. The Secure Estate has remained successful in establishing local authority Secure Units and the Secure Training Centres for 12 to 14 year olds. The Prison service manages to operate the two specialist Youth Treatment Centres operated by the Department of Health and Young Offender Institutions and Young Offender wings, for youngsters aged 15 to 18 (Matthews & Pitts, 2001, p. 168). Alongside the reorganisation and differentiation of communities the communitarians face a related problem, which presented the demise of regulatory and socialising institutions. In much communitarian writing there is evidence to be held responsible these institutions the family, the school, the police, the prison and indeed the state. The implications of the assessment which the Government failed to realise are that the pivotal traditional mechanisms through which social order and discipline are normally maintained are in disarray. It is in this context that the problems had to be focussed repeatedly by referencing to the relation between single parent households and delinquency had to be seen. The Government did not realized even for while that punitive punishments would not resolve the problem that these parents initiate, being irresponsible and feckless combined with calls for making parents take more responsibility for their children, overlooks the reality that such families lack resources to impose 'discipline' on children who live in a world in which there is great uncertainty about what constitutes an appropriate form of discipline. Therefore, Government attempts to salvage the 'cornflake' family are unlikely to work in the longer term and instead of perpetuating a backward-looking view of the role of weak and outdated institutions. The paradox of the dominant forms of political thinking on both sides of the Atlantic is that they are guided by principles which are simultaneously wildly utopian and nostalgic and appear increasingly out of touch with the changing realities of urban life, while espousing a mixture of opportunistic and pragmatic policies couched in the language of managerial. Government answers the critics by reckoning its policies that encourages the individualisation and commodification of security, offering only minimum guarantees, above which individuals are encouraged to take responsibility for them. This neo-liberal notion of 'freedom' and responsibility, according to the Government in turn, influences notions of personal morality and the dependent subject of welfarism replaced by neo-liberalism (Pratt, 1996). It is in this context that critics make sense of the contradictory policy initiatives which on one side establish agencies to reduce social exclusion, while at the same time implement a reduction in welfare payments to marginalised populations and how at one moment the government is advocating minimum mandatory sentences for burglary, drug dealing and violence, while at another it is generously funding programmes of restorative justice and community programmes for disaffected youth (Matthews & Pitts, 2001, p. 114). The political message about the inequitable distribution of wealth is the limitation to their freedom, freedom of expression to which poor youth who have no other means to express their beliefs other than to express through rage and vandalism. The work of unemployed and homeless youth is just like schizophrenics that are not ill but are heralds of society's pathology. References Audit Commission (1999) Safety in Numbers: Promoting Community Safety, London: Audit Commission. Blair, T. (1998) The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century, London: Fabian Society. Chapman, T. and Hough, M. (1998) Evidence Based Practice: A Guide to Effective Practice, London: Home Office. Coles Bob, (1995) Youth and Social Policy: Youth Citizenship and Young Careers: UCL Press: London. Denver David, McLean Iain, Norris Pippa, Norton Philip, Sanders David & Seyd Patrick, (1998) New Labour Triumphs: Britain at the Polls: Chatham House Publishers: Chatham, NJ. Giddens, A. (2000) The Third Way and Its Critics, Cambridge: Polity Press. Goldblatt, P. and Lewis, C. (1998) (eds) Reducing Offending: An Assessment of the Research Evidence on Ways of Dealing with Offending Behaviour, Home Office Research Study no. 187, London: Home Office. Home Office, (1998) Crime and Disorder Act, London: Home Office. Jonsson, J. O, Mills, C., and Muller, W. (1996), "A half century of increasing educational openness Social class, gender and educational attainment in Sweden, Germany and Britain" In: R. Erikson and J. Jonnson (eds.), Can Education be Equalized The Swedish Case in Comparative Perspective. Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 183-206. Matthews Roger & Pitts John, (2001) Crime, Disorder, and Community Safety: A New Agenda: Routledge: London. Pratt, J. (1996) 'Reflections on Recent Trends in the Punishment of Persistence', Crime, Law and Social Change, 25: 243-64 Sim Joe, (2000) "One Thousand Days of Degradation: New Labour and Old Compromises at the Turn of the Century" In: Social Justice. Volume: 27. Issue: 2. Vincent carol, (2003) Social Justice, Education and Identity: RoutledgeFalmer: London. Sanders Bill, (2005) Youth Crime and Youth Culture in the Inner City: Routledge: New York. Muller Walter & Gangl Markus, (2003) Transitions from Education to Work in Europe: The Integration of Youth into EU Labour Markets: Oxford University Press: Oxford, England. Read More