THE YOUTH JUSTICE SYSTEM

The youth justice system as it currently operates in England strikes the right balance between respecting children's rights and protecting the public.

The youth justice system as it currently operates in England strikes the right balance between respecting children's rights and protecting the public.

Introduction

Children's policy has emerged from the shadows of family and education policy over the last decade, throughout the UK. Government policies have increasingly stressed the need to integrate attention on children's issues across service and policy divides. Children have always been key users of the welfare state, because of their demands on the universal services of health, education and child benefit as well as targeted services such as other social security benefits, social services, housing and leisure. But until recently they were largely 'hidden' within the social category of households or treated as passive recipients of public intervention. Only recently have children been recognised as service consumers with rights as well as needs, who might potentially play a role in governance.

This 'turn' to children's policy straddles considerable political and policy transformation in the UK, with the change of government from Conservatives to New Labour in 1997 and the latter's delivery on its promise of devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Most policy areas affecting children, except for social security, have a long tradition of separate Scottish legislation in areas such as education, family law and social services. Since the opening of a new Scottish Parliament in 1999, however, law-making on children's services has largely shifted from Westminster to Holyrood. In Scotland, the early years of devolution coincided with a shift from political party dissonance north and south of the border to greater consonance.

The Labour party dominated policy-making at UK and Scottish levels, which meant that for nearly ten years until 2007 cross-border party allegiance was in tension with impulses for Scottish distinctiveness, though this ended with the advent of a (minority) SNP (Scottish National Party) Scottish Government in 2007 (Table 1). Complicating the matter further, politicians usually strive to emphasise that children's policies are largely non-party-political, with those related to young people's behaviour a notable exception.

Devolution has accompanied claims and attempts to move from 'government to governance', to recognise and support partnerships and encourage greater civic participation. This has been particularly evident in Scotland, with the Consultative Steering Group for the Scottish Parliament (1998) recommending greater accountability and engagement of government with 'the people of Scotland'. Scottish children's policy can act as a prism to review key questions of devolution, including its impact on policy divergence, convergence or parallelism. There are longstanding debates about the respective roles of four key variables with respect to devolved government, namely distinctiveness in: government structures; society/community/territorial interests; political parties; policies.

The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 was enacted under a Conservative government in Westminster. Partly as a result of this and of close civil service linkages between the then Scottish Office and UK Departments, a number of key principles and terms were 'imported' directly from the ...