The Justice and welfare debate.

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The Justice and welfare debate

Although it has been generally accepted for many years since the arrival of the youth court in the 1908 Children’s Act that ‘special procedures are needed to deal with young offenders, and a series of different arrangements have developed.  There are conflicting views over how such offenders should be dealt with’ (Davies et al, 1995:136). These conflicting views are often referred to as the Justice and welfare debate.    

The arguments and different opinions of how to deal with young offenders have been in debate for many years. In order to look at two totally different perspectives on how to deal with young people and children who commit crime the following paragraphs will consider the punishment, retribution and deterrence believes of the classical criminologist this being the justice approach. Whilst also comparing this to the welfare and rehabilitation beliefs of the conflict and critical criminologist.

The classical theory believes that the punishment should be proportionate to the crime in order to deter the individual and others from committing crime. Furthermore the classical criminologist places the emphasis on the criminal act and not the offender and is concerned with, ‘the establishment of a reformed equitable and efficient system of justice’ (Tierney J, 1996:49). The classical criminologist would therefore advocate a justice approach as the most effective way to deal with young offenders.

Supporters of the justice approach believe in using punishment and retribution to deal with young offenders, pointing out that this will not only deter them from committing further criminal acts but also act as a deterrent to others. They strongly believe that any sentence or punishment given should reflect the seriousness of the offence committed, giving the offender their ‘just deserts’ and that justice should not at all consider the needs of the offender. They argue however that the police should make greater use of cautioning for minor offences. They point out that this would keep young people who had committed minor offence out of the criminal justice system and leave the courts free to deal with more serious offences.  They advocate a return to a justice system that believed in  ‘equality before the law’ a tariff of punishments for certain offences regardless of any welfare considerations.  Although this system in many ways would be quite harsh it would however call for ‘certain minor offences such as drink, drugs heterosexual or homosexual sex under age be decriminalised’ (Muncie J, 2001:270).

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A criticism of the justice model being used to deal with youth crime came from Wolfgang (1972) who directed a long term study of youngsters growing up in Philadelphia and concluded that.

‘The juvenile justice system at its best, has no effect on the subsequent behaviour of adolescent boys, and at its worse, has a deleterious effect on future behaviour’ (Wolfgang et al 1972:252, cited in Rutherford A, 1992:34. In England a Cambridge longitudinal study done by Farrington and West (1961) showed similar results. Farrington argued that ‘once the young offender had been given his first conviction he would ...

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