Youthful Offenders in British Legal Term Paper

" (Social Services Policy Center - Britain, 2005)

Further stated is that "Most offenders in the UK are dealt with by non-custodial sentences. Custodial sentences for indictable offences by adults account for less than one sentence in five, while fines cover more than a third of all offences. About a fifth are given intermediate sentences like probation or community service. The Probation Service (in England and Wales) administers supervision in the community, social work in prisons and after-care: their duty is to 'advise, assist and befriend' offenders. Scotland's equivalent is social work with criminal justice, but currently there are moves to pass this responsibility to the Scottish Prison Service." One problem exists in the fact that "the age of criminal responsibility is not uniform throughout the UK; in England and Wales, it is a mere '10' years of age.

Custodial-based options are:

1) Detention centers;

2) Attendance centers; and 3) Youth custody.

Argument both For and Against Custodial Sentencing of Young Offenders

Situations are known to exist in which custodial sentencing would only prove to disservice the youthful offender and society as a whole There are situations in which the youth might only be assisted to a depth and a scope necessary for the punishment/treatment to effect lasting change. Should the youth have an unstable home life, parents who are deceased, gone or working much of the time then that youth would be in the vicarious position of a pending sentencing hearing, nowhere to reside that would offer assistance in the initiative to rebuild their live.

Against"

The argument against custodial sentencing is an easy one to make. First the fact that these boys are as young as 10 tender years of age. A young boy 10 years of age generally has fallen into the trouble in which he is in without actually meaning for the present outcome to have occurred. It is crucial that the British Legal System make attempts to rectify the discrepancies in their standards of what comprises a 'youthful offender" and to stand on that premises, each time in each court throughout the UK. Alternative methods of procedure in the restorative process of as applied to offenders of a young age. Throughout the review of literature in this study, it has been evident that utilization of the family, school, and community bases toward reformative sentencing of Juveniles is the optimum procedure but one that is not relied upon enough.

Findings of the Research

Findings of this limited research study in relation to juvenile offender sentencing in British Courts is decidedly that more research is needed in the area for the purpose of developing a program to better assist young offenders in the British legal system.

References

Phillips, C. et al. (2005) World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems: England and Wales Online available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/wfbcjeng.txt.

Agnes, Hochman (2005) Scarf and Scales: Variations on Probation Order in the History of Juvenile Penal Law Online available at http://www.koed.hu/medit/agnes.pdf.

King, Peter (2004) The Development of Informal Reformatory Sentences for Juvenile Offenders in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centurie. Center for the Study of Law and Society Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program Papers Presented in the Center for the Study of Law and Society Bag Lunch Speaker Series (University of California, Berkeley) 2004 Paper 21 The Open University, United Kingdom This paper is posted at the eScholarship Repository, University of California. Online available at http://repositories.cdlib.org/csls/lss/21.

Response to the Young Offenders Act Provincial Review (1994) John Howard Society of Alberta Online available at http://www.crimeinfo.org.uk/dictionary/index.jsp.

The Personal Social Services: Social Work and Social Care - An Introduction to Social Policy - Personal Social Services in Britain Online available at: http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/pss.htm.

Youthful Offenders: Custodial Sentence