Current Directions in Youth Justice and Young Offender Programming

There are few areas of practice in the criminal justice arena quite so contentious as how to respond to young people who commit serious and/or repeated offenses. Our views about what should be considered as appropriate responses (both in terms of the type of sentence that should be handed down by the courts and the programs that should be offered) are determined by our beliefs about the degree of responsibility that young people should take for their actions. Whereas some guidance in relation to matters of criminal responsibility can be found in the law (for example, in Australia there is a legal presumption that a child under the age of 14 or 15 is incapable of forming a guilty intention 1 ), allocating personal responsibility for criminal offenses is far from simple when we consider the behavior of those who are under the age of majority. There are those, for example, those who regard young offenders as vulnerable young people who are ‘at risk’ of encountering a wide range of problems across different domains of life. It follows that young offenders, particularly the younger age group, should be offered compassion and support, and that programs should be made available that address a broad range of social and emotional needs. Others, however, regard the offense that the young person has committed as a more appropriate focus, and are mindful of issues of due process and the need to both punish those who break societal rules and deter others from behaving in similar ways. It follows that interventions for young offenders should seek to reduce the harm caused by the young person to the community through intervening in ways that reduce the risk of further offending taking place.