• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study here
    • Courses and subjects
    • Find a course
    • A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Academic departments
    • Visiting the university
    • Explore: get to know us
    • Upcoming events
    • Virtual tours
    • Chat to our students and staff
    • Open days
    • Applicant days
    • Order a prospectus
    • Ask a question
    • Studying here
    • Accommodation and locations
    • Applying
    • Undergraduate
    • Postgraduate
    • Transferring from another university
    • The Student Contract
    • Clearing
    • International students
    • Fees and finance
    • Advice and help
    • Advice for students
    • Advice for parents and carers
    • Advice for schools and teachers
    • Managing your application
    • Undergraduate
    • Postgraduate
    • Apprenticeships
  • Research
    • Research and knowledge exchange
    • Research and knowledge exchange organisation
    • The Global Challenges
    • Centres of Research Excellence (COREs)
    • Research Excellence Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Featured research and knowledge exchange projects
    • Research and knowledge exchange news
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research and knowledge exchange publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Research-project-banner
Research and knowledge exchange
  • Postgraduate research degrees
  • Research features
  • Research organisation
  • Research environment
  • Groups
    • Groups
    • Applied geosciences
    • Built environment
    • Biomaterials and Drug Delivery
    • Brighton and Sussex Medicines Optimisation
    • Chemistry
    • Stress, ageing and disease
    • Ecosystems and environmental management
    • Education
    • Environment and public health
    • Healthcare Practice and Rehabilitation
    • Interdisciplinary Management and Higher Education
    • Management and Employment
    • Mathematics, Statistics and Operations
    • Musculoskeletal
    • Nuclear physics
    • Past human and environment dynamics
    • Paediatrics
    • Product design
    • Sensory neuroscience
    • Social Science Policy
    • Society space and environment
    • Sport and Exercise Science and Medicine
    • Sport, Tourism and Leisure
    • Sustainability and Resilience Engineering
    • Transforming sexuality and gender
    • Values and sustainability
  • Management and Employment
    • Management and Employment
    • Research impact
    • Research areas
    • Research projects
    • Collaborations
    • Events
    • About us
  • Research projects
    • Research projects
    • Alcohol use and young people's offending
    • Customer service behaviour
    • Effects of unemployment on different ethnic groups
    • Employee performance and wellbeing
    • Employment patterns for Polish migrants in south-east England
    • Engagement
    • Gamification in human resources
    • Grandparents and childcare
    • Human rights and four schools of thought
    • Human rights and migrants
    • ITHACA
    • Leadership of organisational change
    • Legal regulation of trade unions
    • Litigants in person
    • Management consultancy and corporate identity
    • Management consultancy and the public sector
    • Managing global human resources in UK multi-national corporations
    • Meaningfulness initiatives
    • MinAs: unaccompanied minors' rights
    • Multinational corporations and human rights
    • NEGOTIATE
    • New vocationalism
    • Occupational regulation and its impact
    • Organisational change failure
    • Restorative justice and young people's offending
    • STYLE Strategic Transitions for Youth Labour in Europe
    • The transformation of retirement? The UK and the US compared
    • Trade union identities and the role of niche unionism
    • Whistleblowing legislation
    • Work care synergies
    • Youth transitions into work: a UK Spanish comparison
  • Restorative justice and young people's offending

Restorative justice and young people's offending

Dr Alex Newbury explored the effectiveness of using restorative justice with young people and specifically examined the impact on re-offending and changing attitudes. Restorative justice involves reintegration, reparation and restoration; it can help rebuild bonds, give a positive goal to aim for, encourage young people to take responsibility for their actions and enable victims to be heard.

Research was carried out over an 18-month period with two Youth Offending Teams in the southeast of England and involved an in-depth, qualitative study of 41 young offenders. Alex Newbury reviewed all relevant documentation related to each case, observed the initial community panel (plus mid-point and final panels, if they were held) and held face-to-face interviews with the young offenders, both at the beginning and end of the referral order. In the case of very young offenders, these were conducted in the presence of the child’s parent. Of the 41 cases observed, seven involved young people below 14 years of age: one 11 year old, three 12-year-olds and three 13-year-olds.

The research provoked particular concerns about the experiences of very young offenders (especially 10-12 year-olds) within the youth justice system and raised questions about the involvement of victims in the process.

Please enable targeting cookies in order to view this video content on our website, or you can watch the video on YouTube.

Project timeframe

This research project commenced in September 2002. The initial research concluded in 2008, but this is an area of ongoing research interest and has resulted in linked research (see the Alcohol use and young people’s offending research project).

Project objectives

This research sought to move the debate forward regarding the best approach for dealing with youth offending. The project aimed to:

  • approach the subject from the perspective of the child
  • consider the ramifications of current policy for the majority of very young offenders, who have generally committed very minor offences
  • examine the presumption that involving victims is essential
  • improve understanding and influence policymaking.
In most Western European nations, they have a completely different way of intervening with youngsters who’ve committed crime. Most of their approaches are more therapeutic, more family and community-based, more about reparation than simply locking somebody up.

Dr Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner, 2009-2015

Project findings and impact

The vulnerabilities of childhood are given relatively perfunctory recognition or accommodation by the justice system, which struggles to deal with children’s reduced level of comprehension, and emotional and behavioural development. The complex terminology (reparation, contract, etc.) and the meeting-based, rather than activity-based, approach is too demanding for the majority of the youngest age group (especially 10-12 year olds). It is questionable whether a disposal that is appropriate for a 17 year old can also be effective for a child as young as 10 years of age. This frequently results in the youngest child offenders becoming mystified rather than restored – or reformed – by the process. The stakes are at their highest with children: how their behaviour and problems are addressed in these precious, most formative years will have ongoing impact for many years to come, if not for the whole of the child’s lifetime.

Findings suggest that the current system is not working and proposes a reframing of societal action and reaction to wrongdoing by the very young. It requires a significant change in our conception and treatment of young offenders, not only by government but also by the media and society as a whole. Using the criminal justice system with young people, with only the smallest accommodation (if any) of their status as children, is problematic. An entirely different approach outside the criminal justice system is required, with a greater investment of resources in early intervention, and a greater emphasis on psychological, emotional and educational support.

With regard to victims, very few are prepared to become involved in the process and there is a danger that the current arrangement can cause more harm than good. There is an inherent tension between the rights and responsibilities of young offenders, and the (presumed) wishes of victims to be heard and for harm to be acknowledged. This dichotomy can cause conflicts of interest between the best interests of the victim and what the offender is prepared to do by way of reparation. This issue is further confused because many young offenders are also victims, either directly in relation to bullying or school fights, or because of exclusion or perceptions of being misrepresented or misunderstood by the education or justice systems. Given the attitude of many young offenders, and their own particular needs and difficul­ties, we should be questioning the benefit of encouraging victims to attend youth offender panels. It may be a rare occurrence for a young offender to give a victim closure at a refer­ral order panel, or to accept responsibility when faced with a room full of adult strangers; instead refusing to apologise or seeking to minimise their offending behaviour. This means that at best the victim becomes little more than a tool in the process; at worst they are further victimised by it.

The contention of this research is that a fundamental paradigm shift in thinking on both a societal and political level is required: from a punitive, criminal justice framework to a consequentialist, community approach.

Research team

Dr Alex Newbury

Output

Newbury, A. (2011) Very young offenders and the criminal justice system: Are we asking the right questions? Child and Family Law Quarterly, 23 (1) 94-114.

Newbury, A. (2011) ‘I would have been able to hear what they think’: Tensions in achieving restorative outcomes in the English youth justice system, Youth Justice, 11 (3) 250-265.

Newbury, A. (2008) Youth Crime: Whose Responsibility? Journal of Law and Society, 35 (1) 131-49.

Partners

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19

Information for Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents