JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Juvenile Justice System

[Name of the institution

Table of Contents

Introduction1

The welfare approach to juvenile problems2

Special care as a concept and practice5

Young people in special care7

As a professional practice8

Conclusions8

Juvenile Justice System

Introduction

Over 15 years ago, Robert Harris and Noel Timms (1993) identified two contradictory viewpoints concerning closed accommodation for children and young people. The first viewpoint emphasizes the fact that in certain situations, some children and young people have to be placed in institutions for their own good. According to this viewpoint, closed accommodation works in the child's best interests and responds to the child's needs. The second viewpoint approaches closed accommodation via the theme of locking-up. Closed accommodation is seen as restricting the rights of the child or the young person. The authors felt that both viewpoints were too simplistic: the first is unreasonably naïve, the second unreasonably cynical.

Harris and Timms's analysis is surprisingly relevant today, when it is considered that children's rights should also extend to situations such as closed accommodation, which are a response to children and young people breaking norms (e.g. Hammarberg, 2008; Kilkely, 2008). Still, the viewpoints tend to be polarized as either defending or rejecting closed accommodation. The arguments are still the same: the child's best interests versus restricting the child's rights. The practice of special care that forms the topic of this article is one example of this. The care in question is a restrictive intervention enabled by the Child Welfare Act. An absolute prerequisite for this intervention is considered to be that it should serve the child's best interests. By virtue of the legislation, special care can be resorted to, among other situations, in order to interrupt a vicious circle of crime that a child or young person has ended up in. Special care is implemented by restricting the child's right to free movement and social contacts in closed institutional space. However, implementing a child's best interests by restricting his or her rights is far from being a straightforward or undisputed matter.

The article aims to show that closed accommodation such as special care should not only be studied in relation to the child's best interests, needs and rights, but also as part of its societal context. The societal context makes understandable the meanings intended when speaking of needs, interests or rights. The Finnish example sheds light on societal solutions that emphasize the welfare approach to young people's problems. The article shows that the welfare approach is not without contradictions and that welfare may turn into a punishment, especially in the experience of the young themselves. The welfare framework may also lead to less vigilance in controlling and monitoring the implementation of closed accommodation.

The article is based on a report on special care in Finland (Kekoni et al., 2008), which studied the practice of special care about one year after the relevant legislation had been passed. The data used includes official statistics, interviews with authorities, and interviews with young people and professionals in special care units. The best that the data can enable are preliminary ...