The Youth Justice White Paper: what does it mean?

On Monday, the Government published its Youth Justice White Paper, Cutting Youth Crime. Changing Young Lives. Our Senior Strategy & Insight Manager Jess Hull, who has led Crest's research into the Child First framework and harmful sexual behaviour, takes a look at what was announced and what it means in practice.

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The youth justice sector has been calling for reform for a long time. Youth justice is delivered locally, which brings real benefits, but also brings the risk of inconsistency in practice and a lack of clear oversight of what is actually happening on the ground. The White Paper recognises these gaps and begins to move us in the right direction. The commitment to an evidence-based, holistic response is encouraging, as is the emphasis on early intervention and robust community sentences. However, recent and devastating attacks involving children as young as 13 show the increasing risk and complexity that youth justice services and partners must manage, and it is important that the right support and protections are in place for victims and communities, as well as children involved in offending.

On parenting orders

Much of the media coverage of the Government’s White Paper has focused on proposals for parents, specifically the expansion of Parenting Orders, including increased use of existing fines and the prospect of imprisonment for parents whose children reoffend. This is understandable given the headlines, but it risks overshadowing the broader substance of the White Paper.

Parents play a vital role in rehabilitation and in reducing reoffending, and Crest's own work, including on child exploitation and how families can manage risk and build protective relationships, consistently shows that parents want to help but are often unsure where to turn. Evidence suggests that parents are most engaged when support is offered voluntarily rather than through compulsion. The focus on Parenting Orders as the primary mechanism raises questions. The use of these orders must be proportionate, and critically, it must not have the effect of removing a caregiver from a child's life. As Crest's research on maternal imprisonment shows, the imprisonment of a caregiver, even for a short period of time, can significantly increase a child’s vulnerability. It is also worth noting that around half of children in custodial institutions have been in care, and around a third of children in care will receive some form of police caution. These are the children at highest risk of offending, and they are precisely the group for whom Parenting Orders are least likely to be available or appropriate.The key question, which the White Paper does not yet fully answer, is how these orders will be used and expanded in practice.

On reducing custody

The White Paper commits to cutting custodial remand by 25% and reducing the overall youth custodial population by 20%. Data that two-thirds of children released from custody reoffend within a year. This is unsurprising to those of us who have worked closely on youth justice. Our research on the Child First framework found that custodial environments are not only difficult places in which to implement Child First principles, but can reverse the positive work that has been done with children in the community.

The focus on reducing custody is therefore right, but must be paired with community sentences and evidence-based interventions. The new Youth Intervention Courts, with their focus on targeted work around vulnerabilities, drivers of offending, health, and education, sound promising. The White Paper also points to strengthening Youth Rehabilitation Orders with intensive supervision and surveillance for the most dangerous offenders. More detail is needed here on how this will be managed, what it will mean for risk in the community, and how the capacity required for that level of monitoring will be resourced.

Two things we will be watching closely

Beyond the headline measures, two aspects of the White Paper deserve more attention than they have received.

The first is data. The White Paper acknowledges that the current framework does not support consistent monitoring of interventions or outcomes, and that there are significant inconsistencies in how out-of-court resolutions are recorded. As it stands, we do not have a reliable picture of what interventions are actually working to stop children reoffending. That makes it very difficult to share evidence or target support effectively. Services are, in many cases, operating blind. It is therefore welcome that from April, the Youth Justice Board will begin gathering data on interventions provided under out-of-court resolutions. This is a piece of the puzzle that has been missing for a long time, and it is hard to overstate how important it is to get right, particularly given the highly localised nature of youth justice delivery.

The second is harmful sexual behaviour and the role of the online environment. The White Paper highlights a rise in harmful sexual behaviour among young people and links it to the growing prevalence of harmful online content. This is something Crest has been tracking closely. Our recent research on public attitudes to sexual deepfakes, commissioned by the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser, found that around 25% of people agree with or feel neutral about the legal and moral acceptability of viewing, sharing, creating or selling a sexual deepfake without the subject's consent and that those most likely to hold these views are younger males who also watch pornography and hold misogynistic attitudes. The overlap between harmful online content, misogynistic attitudes, and the perpetration of sexual harm online and offline is not theoretical. It is increasingly visible in the cases coming through youth justice services.

The White Paper acknowledges that services have not kept pace with the speed and scale of the online environment, and that education has an important role to play in identifying early warning signs. It also says the Government is working with youth justice services and specialist organisations to strengthen the system's response. But the detail on how is thin. We know from our work with policing and youth justice partners that there is currently very limited information in youth justice service action plans on VAWG, and particularly on the online harms connected to it. There is much more to do to understand the scale, nature, and complexity of peer-on-peer abuse, including the relationship between what young people are exposed to online and how that manifests offline. 

This is something we will be watching closely as the White Paper moves from commitment to delivery.