Implementing Policy Change in Youth Justice

Ways of dealing with young people in trouble with the law have been the object of (often intense) popular and political debate for at least two centuries. Despite this, there is no consensus amongst policy makers or criminological scholars about the most appropriate responses. In England, where this study is located, youth justice policies have been in a more or less constant state of change for two decades.

Sitting at the intersection of broader youth policies and criminal justice responses, youth justice practitioners have had to become adept at interpreting and implementing policy changes. However, the implementation of policy is not just a technical exercise on the part of practitioners. It involves intentional and value-laden choices tied up with the notion of 'professionalism' in youth justice. Youth justice practitioners must, therefore, learn to make professional judgements in an environment of changing policy: to implement policy correctly, but also learn how to be 'effective' in an environment of changing policies. However, surprisingly little is known about how youth justice practitioners implement policy, and even less is known about the extent to which the training and education they receive prior to becoming youth justice workers prepares them to manage their everyday working lives.

This research proposal aims to plug an existing gap in knowledge by addressing the following questions:

1. What are the main forces shaping youth justice practitioners' everyday working lives?
2. How do practitioners make sense of the forces shaping their everyday working lives, what do they do (if anything) to ensure control over their working lives?
3. What are the main skills that they think are needed to be 'effective' and what does 'effective' mean?
4. What is needed to support the development of practitioners who are not only able to implement policy, but to be 'effective' in an environment of changing policies?

Answering these questions will help us to understand the role that modern youth justice practitioners in England play in the interpretation and implementation of youth justice policies through a detailed examination of the professional and broader contexts they inhabit and the skills, knowledge, strategies and techniques they describe as being important in their everyday professional life.

We will also explore how these descriptions might help inform the creation of a youth justice pedagogy. In other words, to distinguish the 'professional' knowledge and practices that remain relevant in a constantly changing environment, and to identify implementable recommendations for use by those involved with professional education and training in youth justice.

We will achieve these aims by conducting research with two youth offending services in England. Approximately 100 qualitative, in-depth interviews will be conducted with the full range of youth justice workers in the studied locations, excluding administrative and sessional workers and volunteers. This will involve: operational managers; youth justice practitioners; senior regional and national governmental and YJB (if relevant) personnel; senior local authority personnel, including: the Deputy Director of Children's Services; senior managers from Education and Social Services; other key partners, including local voluntary sector organisations, magistrates and police.

We will be publishing a series of journal articles and a research monograph based on the research findings. We also hope that contributing to debates about 'effective' practice and laying the foundations for a distinctive youth justice pedagogy will directly benefit youth justice practitioners and policy makers. We have devised a series of events to ensure this impact is achieved. We will also publish details of the research, including research findings, on our conference website, which will be accessible to the general public.

In line with the research aims/objectives and the impact objectives outlined in 'Pathways to Impact', the key non-academic constituencies that will benefit from this research project will be: a) those tasked with delivering youth justice policy and practice reform; and b) those involved with youth justice professional education and training. Key to securing impact with both constituencies is presenting the research at the Annual Youth Justice Convention held by the Youth Justice Board and the National Association for Youth Justice Annual Conference (if reconvened), in addition to the range of dissemination activities described below and in 'Pathways to Impact'.

Youth Justice Policy and Practice Reform:

Key stakeholders include: local youth justice service practitioners, their managers; local authority partners; and the Youth Justice Board (or Ministry of Justice if the YJB is disbanded).

Key stakeholders will be engaged through: the project website; consultation workshops with practitioner participants (during the research); 4 page research briefing (hard copies sent to all youth justice services, as well as research participants and key centres of criminological research); short 'research in practice' briefings aimed at practitioners (made available through the website and email lists); publications in practitioner-facing journals and an end-of-project conference targeted at practitioners, policy makers and academics. In the process of dissemination, the practical implications for the practitioner will be made clear.

Local youth justice service professionals and local authorities will also be provided with regular updates via the project website, which will be used as a portal through which visitors can access all of the project publications. Other forms of electronic engagement with non-academic research users will include regular mailing to the Youth Justice / Youth Criminology Specialist Research Network and via its jiscmail distribution list (Dr Phoenix is a steering committee member and co-owner of the jiscmail list). Dr Phoenix will explore the possibility of engaging the Youth Justice Board in the research at an early stage in her capacity as an academic member of their consultation group reviewing the practice of risk assessment and its implications.

Youth Justice Education and Training:

Key stakeholders include: organisations responsible for approving and managing professional education and training (i.e. the YJB, ECORYS and the Open University); and educational organisations responsible for delivering, more broadly, education for youth justice practitioners (including academic departments offering professional education for social workers, probation officers, youth and community workers and vocationally facing criminology and youth justice UG, PGT and Professional Doctorates).

The strategy that will be adopted to ensure impact with this constituency of non-academic research users will 'piggy-back' the pathways to impact outlined above, alongside a publication strategy that specifically targets key journals focusing on (i) professional education in children's services and in community justice; (ii) youth justice practice across the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

More directly, Dr Phoenix has already begun the process of engaging with the YJB, and is in consultation with Ruth Searle, Senior Strategy Advisor, about possible changes to workforce development. The key success indicator of engaging this constituency (both YJB and higher education institutions) will be to chart the adoption and 'career' of the concept of a research-led youth justice pedagogy. The outcome of engagement with non-academic beneficiaries, in this case, will be the construction of a set of implementable recommendations for reforming the content, curricula, or design of professional training. In relation to youth justice, this part of the research project is breaking entirely new ground.