Publications
The Preventions team have published a number of peer-reviewed articles dealing with youth crime and preventions initiatives.
Norris, G., Griffiths, G. & West, M., (2018). Validation of the Ceredigion Youth Screening Tool (CYSTEM). International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 62 (12), 3727-3745.
Abstract: Evidence suggests that only a small minority of youth offenders will continue their behaviour in the longer term and largely independent of any interventions they may receive (Bateman, 2011; Haines & Case, 2015). Hence, “screening out” this larger low-risk cohort could have a positive impact upon the individual through a reduction in stigmatisation/labelling and free up resources for higher risk clients. This article outlines development of the Ceredigion Youth Screening Tool (CYSTEM)—developed and tested to address the two facets of criminality and vulnerability—closely aligned to the eight key risk indicators identified in the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (R-N-R) literature (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). Initial results with two cohorts of 372 young people indicate good convergent and discriminative validity in screening out the lowest level referrals, while also identifying 90% of potential future offenders. More importantly, CYSTEM is able to screen out approximately 35% of the low-risk offenders that are unlikely to require formal evaluation and/or intervention. It is suggested that the streamlining of this process using CYSTEM reduces demand on staff time and decreases the stigmatisation of young people referred for minor offences. Potential improvements to the tool and future developments in statistical risk prediction are also discussed.
Griffiths, G. & Norris, G. (2020). Explaining the crime drop: Contributions to declining crime rates from youth cohorts since 2005. Crime, Law and Social Change, 73, 25–53. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-019-09846-5
Abstract: Since the mid-90s there has been almost a 50% reduction in the volume of crime in England and Wales - a trend that has been mirrored in many Western countries (Greenberg Justice Quarterly, 31(1), 154–188, 2014). Despite previous assumptions, for example, declining birth cohorts, it is proposed here that the decline in crime for the 1995–2005 period can largely be attributed to a doubling of the probability of a crime being ‘proven’ (cf Lloyd et al. 1994; MOJ, 2012; Taylor 2016). However, in the last decade these reductions in crime rates have levelled off to a relatively stable degree. Analysis of published data relating to the performance of the criminal justice system in England and Wales suggests that reductions in crime levels since2005 are largely accounted for by the fall in proportion of the youth population engaging in offending behaviour. It is argued that falls in rates of crime are largely independent of the offending frequency of young people or variations in the probability of offences being proven; rather, reductions in youth crime over this period could largely be attributed to policy changes, including multiagency interventions targeted at young people who were at risk of starting to offend (McAra and McVie 2015; Smith 2015). Further discussion suggests that the binary proven reoffending rate is not an accurate barometer of criminal justice system performance; rather it is argued that reductions in the youth offending population feed forward into later reductions in the number of adult offenders and further impact on overall crime rates in the longer term.