Youth Diversion Program - does it work?

kapisko1PL

So for some strange reason I believe that the YDP appears to have little or no intended effect on what it is trying to achieve, that is, prevent young people from entering into the full justice system.

Albert Einstein once said that if you read something on the internet then it must be true and what I refer to here is pretty much various articles on the Independent, IrishTimes or my favourite DublinLive of youths harassing shop owners, robbing people, stabbings (sometimes with deadly effect) or more petty crime like property damage, throwing glass bottles at people (this one I heard from my friend), riding scrambler bikes etc etc. Since you cannot eradicate crime completely, I find that the youth in Ireland is very specific and protected under magic laws that despite their actions, the umbrella of judiciary system will somehow magically turn their life around without them taking any consequences for their actions, whatever they might have done (with some exceptions).

Now, I do have to admit that I am a foreigner living in Ireland for the last solid 14 years. I have a full Irish education and spent more than half of my life here. Personally (touch the wood) I never had any issues with youths (except some morons banging on my ground floor windows) therefore I come to realise that maybe most of those stories are either exaggerated since they make publicity or that it is actually a widespread problem and the people in charge appear to have little interest in changing this.

Let's say that a youth has done something, either damaged a property or attacked an adult, who is then consequently arrested and dealt with by the youth diversion program, the outcome of which should be that they will never reach the full justice system and so reintegrate back into the society as a "proper" person. What exactly happens? Are there ever consequences for their actions? What exact punishment is there for them OR there is no punishment since that is the whole idea of the YDP? What methods are employed to teach young people not to do the BAD things again? Statistically speaking, what is the outcome of this programme, is it working?

I welcome a discussion!

ohnonotgmail

this is a good place to start https://www.iprt.ie/youth-justice/review-and-evaluation-of-garda-youth-diversion-programmes-2019/

Peregrinus

kapisko1PL wrote: »

Let's say that a youth has done something, either damaged a property or attacked an adult, who is then consequently arrested and dealt with by the youth diversion program, the outcome of which should be that they will never reach the full justice system and so reintegrate back into the society as a "proper" person . . .

I think this is where you're going wrong. The outcome of "reaching the full justice system" is not that people "reintegrate back into the society as a 'proper' person". Prison is remarkably bad at reforming people; reoffending rates are high.

And, really, we shouldn't be suprised at this. Prison is an appalling place to be - horrifying, threatening, violent, dehumanising. It's pretty brutal. And, if you treat people brutally, the outcome is rarely to make them better people. We call it "brutalising" because that's what happens; people who are treated brutally become brutal.

A strikingly high proportion of crimes are committed by young men aged between about 17 and about 25. This has always been so. Most people who offend at this time of their lives do stop - they grow up, basically. There's no reason to think, and no evidence to suggest, that they grow up more quickly if sent to prison or otherwise treated harshly. Maturity is not something that can be accelerated in this way.

The best that can be said for sending them to prison is that, while they're in prison, people are largely protected from their offending. But the worst is that, while they're in prison, they are being brutalised and, therefore, they are more likely to be end up in the minority of young offenders who become and remain adult offenders. Far from "reintegrating them into society", therefore, harsh treatment means that the normal process of maturing and becoming responsible is interrupted; long-term outcomes are poorer than for young offenders who are not sent to prison (because, e.g, they are not successfully detected or prosecuted).

The idea with youth justice alternatives is to provide a less brutal alternative to prison, which still involves some degree of supervision and so (hopefully) some protection against further offending, without the downside risk of brutalising young offenders and so making it harder for them to mature to responsiblity in the ordinary way.

You can certainly ask how well that has worked - what information do we have about outcomes? But I don't think you should approach this with the presumption that the standard justice system works well and delivers good outcomes for young offenders; it does not. The question we should be asking about about these alternative and diversionary programmes is: do this produce less awful outcomes than the standard justice system has produced?