Societal reactions to sexually abusive adolescents: a Swedish perspective

It is urgent to detect and appropriately treat young sex offenders (YSOs) to prevent continued sexual offending into adulthood. We studied the presence of two significant factors in YSO treatment, i.e. interagency cooperation and specific focus on offending behaviours among social services, mental health, and law enforcement professionals involved with identified YSOs. The sample consisted of a subset of all 56 YSOs subjected to forensic psychiatric assessment (FPA) in Sweden between 1988 and 1995. These sixteen individuals were known by the authorities for sexually abusive behaviours already before committing the sex offence leading to FPA. Both interagency cooperation and professional focus on offending behaviours per se were rare. Thus existing interventions for YSOs in a well-developed social welfare state failed to prevent further sexual offending. We suggest that empirically based individual-oriented models for the prevention of criminal recidivism among YSOs should supplement general social welfare policies and non-specific interventions.     

Young people's perspectives of being parented in critical situations: teenage non‐offenders and desisters speak out

This paper considers young people's perspectives of being parented and draws on a study that comprised secondary analysis of 112 qualitative interviews with teenagers who had either never offended or who had ceased to offend for at least a year. Young people's offending behaviour has traditionally been linked to parenting styles, but it is parenting practices that proved central to parental responses to revelations about their offspring's offending. During the interviews, desisters gave accounts of their upbringing and, in particular, the parenting they experienced in one critical situation, namely when their offending came to light. At this point, parents of desisters were reported to be more punitive, more emotional and less measured than they were customarily, and non‐offenders anticipated similar reactions from their parents if they were to offend in the future. The relevance of the findings for professional interventions, especially parenting programmes, and for social workers in child protection is discussed, and suggestions for further research is made.     

Offending behaviour in care: is children's residential care a ‘criminogenic’ environment?

This paper focuses on offending behaviour and children in residential care. The paper considers whether children's residential care is a ‘criminogenic’ environment, i.e. whether this type of care environment helps to provide the conditions that produce crime or criminality. The paper draws on the findings from recently completed research on 10 children's homes in a large county local authority in England. This paper focuses on the patterns shown in trend data collected on problematic and offending data across these homes over a 7‐year period (2001–2007) and a 1‐year cohort study of 46 young people. Interviews with care staff and young people are used to contextualize these patterns. The data provide evidence of an environment where conflict and offending behaviour are common. It is argued that the residential care environment, particularly for older teenagers, often presents a set of risks that tend to reinforce offending behaviour and that this is in part due to its ‘last resort’ status.     

From Youth to Adult Homelessness

Governments have shown an interest in early intervention strategies to reduce youth homelessness, but critics say that early intervention programs lack clear outcomes. This paper investigates what happens when early intervention programs are not in place and young people progress to adult homelessness. The paper assesses the ‘social adaptation’ hypothesis that the longer young people are homeless the more they adapt to homelessness as a way of life. The paper uses information on 1,677 individuals who first became homeless when they were 18 or younger. Three‐quarters of the sample had progressed to adult homelessness (defined as 25 or older) and one‐quarter were now young adults aged 19 to 24. The findings confirm that the longer people are homeless, the more difficult it becomes to get out of homelessness. However, the social adaptation account overstates the extent to which people accept homelessness as a ‘way of life‘. People can return to conventional accommodation if they are given long‐term support. The paper concludes with three policy recommendations.     

Hard to reach and easy to ignore: the drinking careers of young people not in education,employment or training

Young people's drinking in the UK remains a matter of medical, social, media and political concern. The notion of transition and drinking styles in the move from childhood to adulthood and from education to employment has been central to understanding young people's drinking behaviour, but little is known about how the drinking patterns of those not in education or employment, both men and women, develop over time. This paper reports on research which aimed to examine the current drinking habits and drinking careers of young people not in education employment and training who are traditionally described as hard to reach. In‐depth qualitative interviews were undertaken with 23 young people: 15 women and 8 men aged between 14 and 23. The findings are presented with respect to three stages of drinking: starting, continuing or increasing, and decreasing or stopping. The conclusions indicate that for the majority of these young people, alcohol is a significant factor in their lives and that peers, gender, time and place combine to structure both their current alcohol use and drinking career. The paper argues that an understanding of young people's drinking career development and current alcohol use will help target effective social work and multi‐agency intervention.     

Early outcomes for young adults transitioning from out-of-home care in the USA

This paper describes the well‐being of participants in the Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth (n = 603), a study of youth leaving out‐of‐home care in the USA, at the point where they have been ‘young adults’ for about 1 year. Although some of these young adults are in stable situations and either moving forward with their education or employed in promising jobs, more of them are having significant difficulties during the early stages of the transition to adulthood. Too many are neither employed nor in school, have children that they are not able to parent, suffer from persistent mental illness or substance use disorders, find themselves without basic necessities, become homeless, or end up involved with the criminal justice system. They are doing worse than other young adults across a number of important dimensions. Most of these young adults continue to maintain relations with members of their family of origin, with many finding themselves living with family at age 19. Importantly, those young people who chose to remain under the care and supervision of the child welfare system experienced better outcomes than those who either chose to or were forced to leave care.     

Risk and Public Protection: Responding to Involuntary and ‘Taboo’ Risk

Growing media, political and public concern with high‐risk offenders in the community has focused policy attention on the concept of ‘public protection’. A notion that the public has the right to be protected, particularly from ‘monstrous’ offenders such as predatory paedophiles, has infiltrated much recent legislation and penal policy. This article will explore the critical factors in the ‘public protection’ trend and the framing of risk and risky offenders that has ensued. In particular, attention will be given to the new surveillance and intervention mechanisms under the Multi‐Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) and whether these arrangements manage risk or displace it. To what extent are they driven by the ‘precautionary principle’ and defensive responses to risks that are over‐inflated? To what extent does this result in ‘perverse incentives’ to over‐manage certain risks and to over‐concentrate on restrictive risk management techniques such as electronic tagging, satellite surveillance and curfews rather than treatment? Does the system represent effective risk management or a system for dealing with risk anxiety – both of the public(s) and of politicians?     

Supporting young people from care to adulthood: International practice

This paper explores practice examples relating to young people's transitions from care to adulthood. It discusses examples drawn from young people's pathways to adulthood, leaving care law and policy and participation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the research evidence on promoting the resilience of young people from care to adulthood, by proposing a framework for evaluating the impact of practice. It is suggested that practice should be interrogated in respect of the contribution made to stability and continuity, educational achievement, involving young people, preparation and support into adulthood, and health and well‐being.     

Use of population measures and norms to identify resilient outcomes in young people in care: an exploratory study

The purposes of this study were to derive a new method for identifying resilience (i.e. positive adaptation in spite of serious adversity) among young people in care and to determine the percentage of the latter who experienced resilience on selected outcomes, as conceptualized from within the developmental approach of Looking After Children. The participants comprised two samples of young people who were living in out‐of‐home care (mainly foster care) in the province of Ontario, Canada, 340 aged 10–15 years and 132 aged 5–9 years. Virtually all had experienced severe adversity in their families of origin, such that in most cases the legal custody, care, and control of the young people had been permanently transferred from their parents to a local Children's Aid Society. Corresponding to each in‐care sample was a general‐population sample of the same age range that served as a normative comparison group and was drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). The NLSCY is an ongoing, long‐term social‐policy study of the development of a nationally representative sample of Canadian children into adolescence and early adulthood. The general‐population samples were composed, respectively, of 5539 young people aged 10–15 years and 11 858 children aged 5–9 years. Resilience among the young people in care was operationally defined, on each outcome variable, as average or above‐average functioning relative to that of the general‐population sample of the same age range. The percentage experiencing resilience was relatively high on the outcomes of health, self‐esteem, and pro‐social behaviour, moderate on the outcomes of relationship with friends and anxiety and emotional distress, and low on the outcome of academic performance. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Are Young People in Correctional Institutions Different from Community Students Who Have Never Been Convicted?: Differences in Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviours

Correspondence to Byoungduk Sohn, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford, Barnett House, 32 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2ER, UK. E-mail: byoungduk.sohn{at}linacre.ox.ac.uk Summary By comparing the prevalence of emotional and behaviour healthproblems among institutionalized juvenile offenders with thatamongst a non-offending sample of adolescents, this study indicatescommon characteristics of the perceived emotional and behaviouralproblems, and describes risk factors pertinent to persistentjuvenile offending. Familial backgrounds, behavioural and emotionalmeasures were collected through self-report surveys. Resultsshowed that young people in secure units claimed significanthigh levels of emotional and behavioural problems and that thoseproblems were associated with their disadvantaged familial socio-economicbackgrounds and perceived parenting factors. Various policyimplications are recommended to tackle problems amongst thesedisadvantaged young people in correctional institutions in Korea.In particular, for those working with young people in correctionalinstitutions in the UK, the findings highlight the importanceof culturally relevant programmes.     

Understanding lifetime homeless duration: investigating wave 1 findings from the Journeys Home project

The variation in the amount of time people remain homeless has important policy implications with respect to reducing long‐term homelessness and designing more effective early intervention approaches. This paper examines the factors that influence lifetime homeless duration in Australia using data from the first wave of Journeys Home, a new national survey of individuals exposed to high levels of housing insecurity that employs more rigorous sampling methods than previously used. Those at increased risk of long durations of homelessness over their lifetimes include people who had less family support in childhood, shorter work histories and lower education levels. We also find evidence supporting the idea that people who first experience homelessness at a young age are more likely to experience persistent homelessness.     

A daily diary investigation of the influence of early family adversity on social functioning during the transition to adulthood

Early life stressors are associated with maladaptive social functioning in childhood and adolescence, but it is unclear whether and how the negative interpersonal effects of stress persist into adulthood. Daily diary surveys were used to examine young adults' social behavior and mood reactivity to social stressors as a function of experiences of early family adversity. Stressful early family environments predicted more daily reassurance seeking, but not aggression, withdrawal, or positive social behavior. Early family adversity also moderated the within‐person effects of social stressors on next‐day mood, such that individuals with high levels of adversity had elevated next‐day negative affect in response to higher than average social stress. Findings highlight the enduring impact of early adversity on social development, with implications for developing targeted policies and interventions.     

A Review of Car Crime in England and Wales

Summary With 21 per cent of offences recorded by the police in the 12months ending March 1999, and representing 1,077,700 theftsof and from vehicles, motor vehicle crime is the single mostcommon offence in England and Wales. Young males under 21 yearshave been found to be responsible for three-quarters of carthefts. Studies in the United Kingdom suggest the characteristicsof these offenders include those associated with socio-economicdeprivation and poor self-esteem; whilst for many, involvementin car crime is a means of seeking excitement. The requirement to identify the needs of car offenders, andthe establishment of intent and purpose within offending behaviourprogrammes, saw an increase in the number of probation-basedmotor projects from 1990. Access to the car, and opportunitiesto drive in controlled environments were present in some ofthe newer projects, although many had abandoned this principle.Whilst little empirical evidence exists to support their claims,a number of projects have boasted success in their efforts toreduce the risks of further car crime amongst offenders whohave completed programmes at motor projects as part of theirsentences. Eight motor projects that challenge offending behaviourare reviewed and the latest Home Office evaluation discussed.     

Young male offenders in community‐based rehabilitative programmes – self‐reported history of antisocial behaviour predicts recidivism

Ginner Hau H, Smedler A.‐C. Young male offenders in community‐based rehabilitative programmes – self‐reported history of antisocial behaviour predicts recidivism Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 413–420 © 2011 The Author(s), International Journal of Social Welfare © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Recidivism over 18 months was investigated in a representative group of young Swedish male offenders, 15–17 years old, referred to community‐based rehabilitative programmes (n= 189). Registry data on their earlier contacts with social services and previous convictions were also collected. Eighteen months after programme start, 60 per cent of the young offenders were registered as suspected of new crimes, 48 per cent were registered for crimes of violence. Previous contacts with the social services had been documented for 44 per cent, and 30 per cent were registered as previously convicted. However, the group was highly heterogeneous, and all registry data corresponded well with self‐reported history of antisocial behaviour collected at the start of the programme, which identified three subgroups (n= 60, 65 and 64, respectively) with significantly different problem profiles. Results are discussed in relation to developmental theories of antisocial development and the need to adhere to the risk principle when designing interventions for young offenders.     

Gender Differences in Criminal Sentencing: Do Effects Vary Across Violent,Property, and Drug Offenses?*

Objective. Many studies find that females benefit from their gender in sentencing decisions. Few researchers, however, address whether the gender‐sentencing association might be stronger for some crimes, such as minor nonviolent offending, and weaker for other offenses, such as serious violent crime. Method. Using a large random sample of convicted offenders in Texas drawn from a statewide project on sentencing practices mandated by the 73rd Texas Legislature, logistic regression and OLS regression analyses of likelihood of imprisonment and prison length illustrate the importance of looking at sentencing outcomes not only in terms of gender but also in terms of crime type. Results. Specifically, we find that the effect of gender on sentencing does vary by crime type, but not in a consistent or predicted fashion. For both property and drug offending, females are less likely to be sentenced to prison and also receive shorter sentences if they are sentenced to prison. For violent offending, however, females are no less likely than males to receive prison time, but for those who do, females receive substantially shorter sentences than males. Conclusions. We conclude that such variation in the gender‐sentencing association across crime type is largely due to features of Texas' legal code that channel the level of discretion available to judges depending on crime type and whether incarceration likelihood or sentence length is examined.     

Incorporating self‐determination into substance abuse prevention programming for youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood

Youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood are at higher risk for alcohol and substance abuse disorders than general population youth. At the same time, these youths are often recipients of strong clinical intervention, often at levels considered unnecessary, for other mental health or behavioural challenges. Because of this, there is sometimes resistance from providers to offer services such as substance abuse prevention programming as it may be seen as contributing to youths' overclinicalization, stigmatization, or retraumatization. Using thematic content analysis, this qualitative study analysed focus groups with community stakeholders providing recommendations on support services for youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood to derive strategies for delivering substance abuse prevention programming in a way that enhances youth self‐determination. Findings were organized by self‐determination theory's 3 key psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. All three needs were represented in stakeholder recommendations, which were translated into strategies for bolstering youths' achievement of each need. Strategies include a mix of those already present in motivational interviewing‐based brief substance abuse prevention interventions as well as more unique strategies that are much less frequently employed but that may better meet the needs of youth with foster care experience.     

Predicting after-care outcomes: the importance of 'felt' security

Young people who ‘age out of care’ generally do not have the continuing source of emotional, social and financial support that is available to most young people in their transition to early adulthood. They therefore face the challenges of making various transitions with fewer resources and less support, and at an earlier age and in a less graduated way than young people of the same age in the general population. Some, however, manage this process more successfully than others. The current study examines the links between stability, perceived or ‘felt’ security and later outcomes for young people 4–5 years after leaving care. It is based on a four‐wave longitudinal study over 5 years of 47 young people leaving care in New South Wales, Australia. Felt security in care, and continuity and social support beyond care were the main significant predictors of these young people’s outcomes 4–5 years after leaving care. While stability in care was important, this may be as a means to an end–building a sense of security, belonging and a network of social support.     

Geographical Distribution of Some Young Offenders

Youthful offending rates for municipalities in metropolitan Melbourne have earlier been calculated, and those rates have been interpreted by some as indicating the seriousness of the problem from one municipality to another. However, that approach wrongfully presumes some social uniformity across the municipality. In this paper, three municipalities with quite different offending rates are broken into more socially homogeneous areas, and offending rates are calculated for those smaller areas. Each municipality is shown to have areas of both very high and very low offending rates, plainly indicating that a rate for the municipality alone masks the specific areas where problems may or may not occur. It is suggested that the benefits in providing such specific information based on other than historically determined boundaries, are obvious for social planning and funding purposes.     

Gender similarity in growth patterns of support toward friends during young adulthood

The purpose of this article was to analyze change over time in a specific aspect of prosocial behavior, emotional support toward friends, using two different methodologies. We examined how emotional support changes during the transition to adulthood and whether gender‐based group comparisons yield different gender patterns than person‐centered growth mixture models. We hypothesized that emotional helping toward friends would increase over time and that person‐centered analyses would not show gender differences as large as those indicated by group comparison models. Participants were 466 young adults (ages 18–21). Findings indicated that important intragroup variance was masked when analyses focused on comparisons between gender groups. Person‐centered analyses indicated two mixed‐gender groups with different prosocial trajectories. We discuss how the methods and outcomes of person‐centered analyses are more congruent with current theories of “gender similarities” as well as empirical evidence of the small gender difference in social behaviors such as emotional support.     

Responding to Youth Crime in Scotland

Correspondence to Bill Whyte, Director, Criminal Justice Social Work Development Centre for Scotland, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh, Flat 1FR, 31 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LJ. E-mail: B.Whyte{at}ed.ac.uk Summary Scotland’s Children’s Hearings deal with young peoplewho offend within an integrated system dealing also with youngpeople in need of care and protection, on the assumption thatthe difficulties of both groups have similar roots in multiplesocial disadvantage and social adversity (Whyte, 1998a). A government-fundedstudy, one of the first since the system’s inception in1971, was commissioned to examine the social characteristicsof over 1,000 children and young people referred for offenceand nonoffence reasons. This paper describes the characteristicsof 465 of the young people who were referred specifically foroffending. It provides the first ‘official’ datain twenty-five years on young people in the system. The studyfound that most of those referred for offending had characteristicsstrikingly similar to those referred for nonoffence reasons,as predicted when the system was first established, and similarto those present in the general literature on young offendersfrom other jurisdictions. The study poses fundamental questionstaken up by the Scottish Executive’s review of youth crimeon how best to design systems and develop social interventionsthat can address offending and social disadvantage in an integratedway.