UK: 'Life Outside: Collective Identity, Collective Exclusion'

14th September 2011

The Howard League for Penal Reform has published a new report which focuses on life after young people leave custody and come under the supervision of youth offending teams.

The report, entitled Life Outside: Collective Identity, Collective Exclusion,  is the second substantive policy report to be produced by the Howard League for Penal Reform. It was developed from participation with children and young people in the criminal justice system as part of U R Boss, a five year project. It focuses on the lives of young people after they leave custody and come under the supervision of youth offending teams in the community. 

The key theme that emerged from the report was young people’s perceptions of themselves as separate from the rest of society, how the conditions and restrictions that are imposed on them when they leave prison criminalise and exclude them further. The report emphasises the failure of supervision in the community to tackle the underlying causes of crime, instead  reinforcing young peoples perceptions of themselves as the ‘collective other’.

Furthermore, it is argued that this 'collective exclusion' of young people from the justice system may have contributed to the involvement of children and young people in recent riots and disorder in England. 

The report makes a number of recommendations:

• Prevention and early intervention should be a priority.
• Intensive Supervision and Surveillance should be scrapped.
• The Detention and Training Order should be scrapped.
• Interventions should be designed to address the needs and risks of youths on an individual rather than a collective basis.
• Young people’s involvement should be central to all decisions made in their lives in line with article 12 of the UNCRC.
• The current system of criminalisation and imposition should be replaced by one of integration and opportunity.
• Every effort should be made, in both guidance and by practitioners, to prevent young people being recalled to custody.

Read more:

• Read Life Outside: Collective Identity, Collective Exclusion here.
• Read Life Inside (report published in 2010) here.