Young Adults on Probation: Lessons from an Evaluation of a Specialist Youth to Adulthood Transitions Hub

• In Event: Novel approaches to community sanctions and sentencing

Abstract

Young adults (18-25-year olds) in the criminal justice system are receiving focused attention across a number of jurisdictions. This is due to their particular stage of life course development and developing ‘maturity’. Existing arguments state young adults should be treated as a distinct group within the criminal justice system. In England and Wales there is a range of practice and growing evidence on what age and developmentally-appropriate service provision should comprise. This paper presents findings from a two-year Ministry of Justice funded evaluation of a specialist young adult probation hub pilot in Newham, East London. The Hub was designed as a co-located, multi-disciplinary teamworking model including probation practitioners and commissioned services such as mentoring, mental health and well-being and speech and language communication support. An initial consideration of the project was that by intervening early in the lives of young adults who offend through dedicated provision in the form of the hub model, opportunities to interrupt criminality might be realised. Qualitative interviews were carried out with 60 probation and commissioned services staff and 35 young adults under probation supervision over three fieldwork phases at the beginning, middle and end of the pilot. Through analysis of this longitudinal qualitative data we highlight the key features of this bespoke young adult probation service, the ways in which staff experienced working in this specialist service and the main benefits young adults derived from it. We will reflect on the ways in which we sought to ensure the voices of young adults were present in our findings. We will conclude by considering the implications for ‘rolling out’ a similar model in different geographic areas and what this means for improving young adult probation practice more broadly.

Authors

• Jenni Robyn Ward, Middlesex University

• Karen Duke, Middlesex University

• Andrew Fowler, Sheffield Hallam University