Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:18 pm
Time: 10:18 pm
Results for young adult offenders (europe)
1 results foundAuthor: Pruin, Ineke Title: Better in Europe? European responses to young adult offending Summary: Over the last ten years approximately, the question of how to respond appropriately to the offending of young adults has emerged as a point of increased focus within international criminological research and criminal policy. This development has mainly been based on recent research results in the field of neurosciences and studies investigating individual differences in criminal careers across the life course, which - taken together - shed a different light on young adult offenders and their behaviour. These research results question the adequacy of immediately and abruptly barring offenders from the special regulations, approaches and procedures provided for under juvenile justice legislation simply because the offence happened to be committed after the offender has turned 18, or because the offender happens to have turned 18 in the course of proceedings (Farrington/Loeber/Howell 2012, p. 729). Recent experiences have shown that the implications of these findings are strong enough to justify a change in criminal policy governing the treatment of young adult offenders. Such change can be extensive, like in the Netherlands, or gradual like in England, where the Transition to Adulthood Alliance in particular has promoted such developments. The last literature review by Prior et al. 2011, commissioned by the Barrow Cadbury Trust and comprising a comprehensive overview of interdisciplinary research results on young adults, is barely three years old, but nevertheless, in the meantime there are new analyses and developments to be reported on. The results from two large working groups comprising many highly esteemed scholars and researchers from the field - one European with 33 scholars and one US-American with 32 scholars (Loeber et al. 2012 and Loeber/Farrington 2012) - were published in 2012. Furthermore, a recent volume in the Cambridge Criminal Justice Series has focused on young adults and their treatment in the criminal justice system, which is based on conference papers from one of the first Transition to Adulthood Alliance experts meetings (Losel/ Bottoms/Farrington 2012). A distinct approach to juveniles New considerations emerge from the following questions: specific juvenile justice systems or approaches have been successfully implemented all over the world. Providing a special approach to responding to juvenile offenders is not only mandatory due to international Human Rights Law - it is also a logical consequence if policy is to be based on a deep and wide base of research evidence: juvenile offending can be characterised as ubiquitous and episodic. Self-report studies have shown that most offenders stop behaving in a criminal manner regardless of whether they have experienced any public reactions (like prosecution) to their offending (spontaneous remission). Therefore, juvenile justice policy rightly tends to regard youth offending as a more or less normal pattern in juvenile development (at least for the vast majority of juvenile offenders who cannot be defined as 'chronic offenders'). Juvenile justice approaches and strategies normally seek to avoid the well-known negative consequences of harsh criminal sanctions like imprisonment, by providing a more tolerant approach to dealing with juveniles. Furthermore, interdisciplinary research has repeatedly and continuously highlighted that juveniles are, for various reasons, not responsible for their criminal behaviour in the same way as adults are for their behaviour (e. g. low impulse control, more susceptible to peer influences, more likely to take risks for excitement, see Farrington/Loeber/ Howell 2012, p. 729 f.). Even leaving such neuroscientific results aside, many existing juvenile justice systems are based around the old notion of doli incapax, i.e. a diminished criminal capacity due to young age. Extending the distinct approach to Young Adults Recent research results and experiences with special approaches to responding to young adult offenders in many justice systems (Dunkel/Pruin 2012) do raise the question whether the arguments in favour of treating juveniles in a manner that better reflects their maturity could not be equally valid for young adults as well? Is it justifiable to regard the 18th birthday as an abrupt cut-off point, after which criminal behaviour is responded to in accordance to adult criminal law, which generally focuses more on retribution than on rehabilitation (at least in most countries) and is doing so logical? Criminological research indeed suggests that the findings pertaining to the particularities of juvenile offending also apply to young adults. Desistance research indicates that changes in patterns of criminal behaviour occur in particular in the phase of young or emerging adulthood. This serves as justification for devoting targeted research to this particular demographic group, and the special provisions that have been put in place in some (juvenile) criminal justice systems throughout Europe give an insight into promising strategies for responding appropriately to offending by young adults. This report aims to summarise recent research results on young adult offenders, focusing on criminological analyses in general and data from Germany in particular, a country where young adult offenders have been included in Juvenile Justice since 1953. A shorter review on some sociological observations on changes in the living contexts of young adults aims to manifest a deeper understanding of the special phase of transition young adults face today. The overview on research results from psychology and neuroscience is concise by comparison due to the respective comprehensive overview by Prior et al. 2011. A second focus of this report lies in providing an overview of the different strategies and practices for responding appropriately to young adult offending that have been put in place in Europe. The presented findings are mainly based on a recent extensive research project conducted by the Department of Criminology at the University of Greifswald, Germany, involving more than 40 international juvenile justice experts (Dunkel et al. 2011), and have been up dated with the help of recent expert interviews. Details: London: Barrow Cadbury Trust; Greifswald, Germany: Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University of Greifswald, Department of Criminology, 2015. 85p. Source: Internet Resource: Transition to Adulthood Alliance: Accessed march 19, 2015 at: http://www.barrowcadbury.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/T2A_Better-in-Europe_Report-_online.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Europe URL: http://www.barrowcadbury.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/T2A_Better-in-Europe_Report-_online.pdf Shelf Number: 134969 Keywords: Juvenile Justice ReformJuvenile Justice SystemsJuvenile OffendersYoung Adult Offenders (Europe) |