Analysis: Knee jerk reactions, however understandable, will only draw young people into a criminal justice net in which they will become trapped at huge personal and financial cost
By Ursula Kilkelly and Katharina Swirak, UCC
The deaths of five teenagers and the serious injuries they caused to three women and a young boy on the M9 have caused understandable shock and outrage. The young people’s dangerous driving, at high speed the wrong way down a motorway in a stolen car, while livestreaming on social media has brough swift condemnation of their criminal behaviour.
There have been calls for specialist Garda driver training, increased places in detention and the introduction of tougher sentences both for young people engaged in such behaviour and their parents. At the same time, concern has been expressed that our youth justice system is ‘broken and certain young people beyond reach.
Persistent and serious criminal behaviour by young people often shocks the public, especially when it is associated with a flagrant rejection of social norms, including the rule of law, while gathering ‘likes’ on social media. As a society, we are right to question how to prevent such harm, and to ask what measures can be used to hold young people accountable for such serious criminal behaviour.
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From RTÉ Six One News, TikTok cites 1,600 risky driving, vehicle theft-type videos since M9 crash
Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Jim O’Callaghan, has indicated an intention to draft a new youth justice strategy in the aftermath of these events, with some calls to amend the Children Act 2001. While the M9 tragedy suggests a change in the nature and intensity of youth crime fuelling calls for ‘get tough’ solutions, as academics with knowledge of decades of research, both academic and real world in nature, we offer this advice to Minister O’Callaghan, of how society can be made safer.
Social research presents a remarkably consistent pattern of evidence, pointing to approaches to youth crime that involve two distinct components – the first is a focus on the young people themselves. Taking account of the complexity of their lives and circumstances is vital to understanding their behaviour and designing appropriate and effective responses. The second component concerns the evidence, also clear, of which approaches are most likely to successfully end and indeed prevent young people’s offending behaviour. Both elements are fundamental, we believe, to making society safer.
An enormous body of research across a variety of countries, including Ireland, establishes that young people who come into conflict with the law share a remarkably consistent set of circumstances. At a personal level, they often have poor mental health and self-esteem, and many have disabilities and learning difficulties, poor physical health, experience of violence and trauma, with common drug taking. They are often out of school, and their families struggle to provide them with sustained care and support. Many suffer loss through death or imprisonment of close family members resulting in an absence of positive role models in their lives and they often come from communities that lack the resources to provide a stable and supportive environment for their development.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's News at One, Gardaí cleared of any wrong doing prior to to wrong way crash on M9
The inter-generational experience of criminal justice can be commonplace leading to young people struggling to see how they can build a life for themselves through legitimate means. Rather, the easy money to be made from drug dealing has great appeal, while the sense of belonging that can come from their collective participation in risk taking behaviour can be difficult to resist.
Poverty, and membership of minority groups, such as being a member of the Traveller community, are characteristics often found among young people in the criminal justice system. Taken together, this complex and interconnected set of circumstances, well established through decades of social research, can lead to young people existing in the margins of mainstream society, where the convergence of individual, family and community disadvantage makes the challenges they face seem insurmountable.
Well established neuroscience now builds on this data, highlighting young people’s lack of maturity as a major factor shaping their behaviour and informing their culpability. Clear evidence exists that young people up to their mid-20s are extremely poor decision-makers, especially under pressure and in the company of their peers, and in these circumstances they often fail to rationalise the consequences of their actions. On a more positive note, however, brain science research also highlights young people’s malleability, confirming that as they mature, they can change and grow, and so should never be written off without hope.
Approaches that divert young people away from the criminal justice system, while engaging them in personal responsibility, can be effective in keeping them away from the police, the courts and detention.
It is also important to note that many young people facing the circumstances outlined above, never get into trouble. Indeed, those who do often grow out of crime, with little or no intervention at all necessary. It is for this reason that preference should be given to maximum diversion and minimum intervention given that even the most benign interventions can draw young people into a system they cannot easily escape, leading to a lifetime of criminal justice system contact.
While taking account of all of this evidence, we fully acknowledge the harm done by young people’s criminal behaviour. This is why some countries have placed emphasis on restorative justice approaches, where young people are supported to develop empathy for those they have wronged, acknowledge the cost of their offending, and take steps, through a system of personal accountability, to remedy these harms.
More generally, approaches that divert young people away from the criminal justice system, while engaging them in personal responsibility, can be effective in keeping them away from the police, the courts and detention. Indeed, research highlights that in most but the most exceptional cases, interventions should seek to direct young people away from the formal justice system, given that once they become system involved, it is very difficult to reset them onto a constructive path. Evidence indicates therefore that resourcing diversion to provide young people with multiple ‘off ramps’ throughout the criminal justice system ensures their best chance of taking up pro-social activity.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, what can Govt do to prevent youth criminality?
Compelling evidence also supports family-based responses to youth offending as having the strongest likelihood of success. As noted earlier, young people who get into trouble frequently lack appropriate family support, and any response to their offending should try to remedy this, in ways that help to scaffold the family itself. Parental sanctions are ineffective, often heaping pressure on already struggling families. By contrast, trauma informed responses offer to understand the person, instead of addressing their behaviour.
However compelling it might seem to punish young people by imposing a sentence of detention, or withholding their right to bail, this approach is not only expensive, it often does little to address young people’s offending behaviour or its underlying causes. For this reason, every effort should be made to keep a young person in their community, where that can be achieved safely, by resourcing community level supports and sanctions. Because time spent in detention as a child can lead to a lifetime of involvement with the criminal justice system, with inter-generational impacts, detention is required both under international law and the Children Act 2001 to be used as a measure of last resort, for the shortest appropriate period of time.
Where detention is unavoidable, the investment involved should be used to promote their education and health, holding them to account through offending behaviour programmes and rebuilding their relationships with family and their community to make return home a success. Reform of Ireland’s Oberstown Children Detention Campus into a child-centred and rights based model, is proof that while this is difficult, it can be done. At the same time, if detention is truly to be a last resort, this must also be a system objective, with community-based sanctions resourced nationally so that for every child the most effective sanction is available at the most appropriate time.
While especially grave types of offending by young people... undoubtedly warrant specialist programmes, there is little evidence to suggest that they are any different from the types of offending that have prevailed for decades.
In summary, research indicates that progressive youth justice responses recognise the complex lives of young people who come into conflict with the law, and the challenges involved in rebuilding their lives by supporting their education, health, and connections with family and community. Taking time to engage with young people, to understand their experiences and needs, is also vital.
While especially grave types of offending by young people - such as sexual offences, serious violence, reckless driving and radicalisation – undoubtedly warrant specialist programmes, there is little evidence to suggest that they are any different from the types of offending that have prevailed for decades.
What is clear, is that knee jerk reactions – however understandable – especially punitive approaches and long sentences – will only draw young people into a criminal justice net in which they will become trapped at huge personal and financial cost. Our society will only be safer, therefore, if we consider all young people worthy of our support, in line with scientific and policy-based research, with approaches that invest in communities, in families and in the young people themselves.
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Professor Ursula Kilkelly is a professor in the School of Law in UCC. Dr Katharina Swirak is a senior lecturer at the School of Society, Politics and Ethics in UCC
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
