Research study into young people’s progress through the youth justice system

Background to the research

The Juvenile Cohort Study (JCS) is one of three major cohort studies undertaken by the Ministry of Justice to track large groups of offenders at specific points in the criminal justice system. The other two look at adult offenders in prison (Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction) and those on community orders (Offender Management Community Cohort Study).
The JCS, which was commissioned by the YJB and the Ministry of Justice, aims to answer questions in regard to young people within the youth justice system by collecting data on the characteristics, needs, offending, and interventions associated with a cohort of approximately 14,000 young people.

Aims of the research

• To profile a cohort of juvenile offenders in terms of their risks, needs, offence histories and protective factors
• To explore the types of interventions received and how well they are matched to the offenders’ needs (as identified via ASSET)
• To establish how strongly interventions may be associated with subsequent changes in risk scores (as measured by ASSET)
• To establish which aspects of the interventions that young people receive their case managers believe are most useful in addressing their offending behaviour, why these interventions are considered useful, and whether interventions are delivered as reported in the administrative systems.

How the research is being conducted

The fieldwork was conducted by Morgan Harris Burrow (MHB) in association with researchers from the University of Surrey and the University of Oxford.
In broad terms, the JCS was designed to capture information about all young people given the agreed target disposals/sentences in a sample of 30 Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) within a one year time window (1 February 2008 to 31 January 2009), and to follow up activities on these cases for a further 12 months. The sources of these data are the YOT case management systems.

A small qualitative study was also conducted involving interviews with practitioners to provide an insight into which aspects of youth justice interventions YOT staff believe have most impact in terms of changing offending behaviour.

Outcomes

It is important to note that the JCS is not an impact evaluation. It was not designed to look definitively at the effectiveness of youth justice interventions, i.e. there was no way of determining what the outcome would have been if they had not had the intervention/s. However, where feasible, the linkage of interventions to outcomes, including reconviction, will be explored.

While a cohort study does not measure the direct impact of interventions and cannot definitively answer the question of what works, it has the potential to tell us a great deal about the characteristics of young people who typically receive interventions (including the mix of risks and needs) and what combinations of interventions they receive. In addition, because cohort studies follow the same subjects throughout, they allow us to examine young people’s progress through time – by investigating the range of interventions they receive during their sentences, and subsequent changes in their needs and patterns of reoffending.
The findings from the JCS study have the potential to inform youth crime and justice policy and practice. Indeed, the results of the JCS and the other cohort studies will be of particular value to practitioners and policy makers because they will investigate the characteristics of, and outcomes for, offenders who receive interventions as they are delivered in regular day-to-day operating conditions. Along with evaluation studies, this will contribute towards an evidence-based picture of what packages might be most useful to reduce reoffending, as well as which individual interventions should be tested further in the longer term.
First results from the study are anticipated during 2011. For questions about the progress of the study, email Jonathan Allen, JCS project team lead.