Youth Justice in Ireland North and South: Legacies of the Past, Influences on the Present

Abstract

Youth justice systems and practices in Ireland have traditionally been shaped by the sociopolitical context, impacted by religious and moral imperatives and prolonged political conflict. The criminal justice systems and the response to children and young people in conflict with the law in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have common antecedents and many shared historical legacies -including a shared legislative framework (Children Act 1908) and the reformatory and industrial school system (which has been the subject of recent historic inquiry on both sides of the border).Partition under the Government of Ireland Act (1920) ultimately led to the establishment of two separate jurisdictions. In what was to eventually become the Republic of Ireland, there was a significant period of stagnation in criminal justice policy particularly in the sphere of youth justice, with new legislation to replace the 1908 Act only introduced in 2001 (Children Act 2001). The history of 'coercive confinement' in the Republic of Ireland, marked by high rates of child and youth incarceration and the longevity of the institutional template, have been documented O'Donnell, 2007, 2012). The emergence of a children's rights discourse, particularly in the context of the unearthing of wide scale abuse within state institutions, has had a profound effect on official discourse and the policy response to young people in conflict with the law (Kilkelly, 2006).The development of the state response to young people in conflict with the law within Northern Ireland has broader parallels with other UK jurisdictions (particularly England and Wales) up until the 1960s, but is overlaid by the subsequent security/criminal justice response to civil and political conflict from this period onwards. The effects of the conflict in Northern Ireland on the criminal justice system, including the co-option of the agencies within the system to manage and contain it, has been the subject of a wide literature (e.g.

Punishment, Youth Justice and Cultural Contingency: Towards a Balanced Approach

“…It was for this reason that it was considered important to question practitioners about what they felt they were trying to achieve within the system, asking questions about their aims, those of others within the system and their perceptions of change. The results do little to contradict existing arguments about the complexity and messiness of contemporary youth justice systems (Carr and McAlister, 2014;Goldson and Hughes, 2010;Goldson and Muncie, 2009). While elements of convergence were apparent, there was also a sense in which the interview data reflected the distinct paths forged by the three jurisdictions in the youth justice field.…”

“…The boundaries of the sample were dictated by accessibility and a snowballing technique was used to gain access to particularly difficult groups of professionals such as judges and magistrates. While clearly an important indicator of the punitiveness of the youth justice system should be provided by young offenders themselves this was considered beyond the scope of the instant study (for an illuminating account, see McAlister and Carr, 2014).…”

“…As already observed, dating from the early 1990s onward, England has pursued policies which have sought to ‘responsibilise’ young offenders (and their parents) resulting in higher custody rates and greater coercion in the community (Muncie, 2008). Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, on the other hand, may be said to have pursued a very different path through their continued commitment to diversion, rehabilitative policies and restorative justice (Carr and McAlister, 2014; Doak and O’Mahony, 2012; Junger-Tas and Decker, 2006). Reforming legislation introduced in both these jurisdictions in 2002 and 2001 respectively has explicitly sought to align these systems with UNCRC principles and laid heavy emphasis on diversion from the criminal justice system.…”