Analysis of Youth Offending: The Youth Justice System and Knife Crime

This report provides an analysis of the youth justice system in England and Wales, focusing on the issues of youth offending and knife crime. It examines the roles and processes involved in prosecuting and punishing individuals under the age of 18, highlighting the increasing rates of knife crime among young offenders and victims. The report discusses the impact of public services, probation services, and charities in preventing and rehabilitating youth offenders, along with recent developments and multi-agency approaches aimed at tackling these issues. A reflective account explores the influence of social media on youth offending, using GIBB’s reflective model to analyze the module's content, feelings, evaluation, and potential actions. The conclusion emphasizes the need for collective efforts from the government, legislative authorities, and citizens to reduce youth offending and create a safer environment.

Professional Practice

Table of Contents
 Introduction
 Youth Justice System
 Public services respond to knife crime
 Impact of probation service and charities in tackling prevention and rehabilitation of youth
offending
 Recent developments Knife crime
 Reflective Account
 GIBB’s reflective model
 Conclusion
 References

Introduction
 Youth justice system refers to processes and organs
that are used to convict, prosecute and punish persons
who are under age of 18 years.
 In England and Wales this system is designed to
prevent offence of children and young persons.
 This report includes system and developed responses
and role of third party in criminal justice system in
England and Wales.

Youth Justice System
 Youth justice system is a system that contains rules and procedure for justice and relevant
proceedings for youth under the age of 18 years who commit criminal offence.
 Earlier it was presumed that children can not commit any offence as they are considered to be
incapable of knowing the difference between right and wrong.
 Now, children who are between age of 10 to 17 are liable to punishment if found guilty and
can not avoid liability by showing that they are unaware of right and wrong conduct.
 In England and Wales in some exceptions when children commit offence like adults like
murder and other criminal offence knowing what is right and wrong can be treated as adult
criminals and offenders. From the age of 18 and onwards individuals are considered as adults
and they are punishable as per adult offenders

Public services respond to knife crime
 Knife crime refers to symptom of gang culture.
 It reflects broader and deeper malaise in society which have been exacerbated by austerity cuts.
 In England knife crime is a serious issue and to deal with various actions are being taken by
government and other organisations.
 This is a priority work area of children's service in England. For the same reason looking at
increasing death and knife crime by children various seminars are being organised.
 Seminars discuss with leaders on how they can deal with the issues of increasing knife crime and
young offenders more effectively. Police of England now have been given more power to tackle
knife crime in response to its increasing rates as per Knife Crime Prevention Orders.

Impact of probation service and charities in tackling prevention and
rehabilitation of youth offending
Probation which is a essential part of criminal justice system in England and Wales. Probation
services are provided by probation committees in England and Wales. These trust are responsible for
seeing offenders who have released from prison on license or who are on community sentence.
Probation staff is required to prepare pre sentence report for those who are sentenced and they can
select most appropriate sentence for them. These probations are designed with a view to
 Making punishments demanding and robust.
 Improving reform of offenders to keep public safe and that can prevent other people becoming a
victim and criminal.
 Making the offenders to pay those who are being harm by them.

Cont.
This also help in effective rehabilitation of those who have been sentenced which reduces
chances of committing offence again.
 Charities are also working and have a important role specifically after offenders have
completed sentence and before anyone commits any kind of offence.
 Charities give required assistance like mentoring and then emotional support so that
offenders do not commit the crime again.
 These are also important in form of counselling that they provide to young offenders
and when someone is at a point of offending.

Recent developments Knife crime
 Half of the all offenders of Knife crime in England are young offenders and these
rates of Knife crime are increasing on a very large scale. Not just the criminals and
offenders are young but victims of these offenders are also young.

Cont.
 There are thousands of cases in England that are related with knife crime and half of
them offenders are of age less than 18 years.
 These rates are increasing very rapidly calling for a action to stop and prevent these
offences.
 Multi agency approach which is known as working collaboratively in order to help each
other and take assistance of other agencies.
 In regard to criminal justice this refers to a concept where more than one agency are
working to prevent young offender from knife crime.

Reflective Account
 Various social media sites which are open and available to everyone and make it very
easy to contact anyone who is active on that sites.
 According to my research have a very significant contribution in increasing young
offending.
 Previously only those who were in reach by location and were available at a point of
time were influenced by people who are active in criminal practices and want to
involve others.

Cont.
 There are various ways in which youth are being affected by social media to offend
main factors are,
 Display of violence and disrespect on social media, there is a lot of material available
on social media where young people can easily access to those material that impact
their mentality and provoke them to commit offend.
 Negative implications for education and employment, people follow members who are
identified as gang members on social media. They offer various type of jobs to these
young people and they get influenced by then and start doing offending practices.

GIBB’s reflective model
This cycle encourages individuals to think systematically about an event or experience. This
includes thinking in a manner of phases of the activity. In this model there are 6 stages that are:
 Description
 Feelings
 Evaluation
 Analysis
 Conclusion
 Action Plan

Cont…
According to the module of young offender that is being prepared here I can explain
reflection in a way that.
 Description, the module was about young offenders in England and Wales. Rates of
young offenders and offences are increasing day by day and various private agencies
and government are working to stop and prevent these young offenders.
 Feelings, before starting the module work I was very excited but later as I carried on
with my research and study I got very upset knowing about the situation in England and
Wales about young offenders.

Cont.
 Evaluation: As the title refers youth offends it is not a good practice and increasing
rates are a very important reason of being concerned about the matter. But actions taken
by government and legislative authorities are very appreciative. Contribution of
volunteers and local agencies is also very helpful in order to prevent youth offence.
 Analysis: This situation is very difficult and affecting other factors of growth in
England and Wales and making it difficult for population to live there peacefully.

Cont.
 Conclusion: This module was based on youth offenders and knife crime which are clearly
not good and something that can make anyone feel good. Though efforts of the government
and other agencies are playing key role in prevention of this situation. Along with them
citizens and parents can also contribute in prevention of this youth offence and knife crime
 Action plan: While working on this module I faced many difficulties and challenges in
form f limited knowledge and lack of experience. But have learned that in future I would be
able to do similar module without any difficulty by using official documents and secondary
and more effective primary research.

CONCLUSION
 On the basis of this report it can be concluded that even after so many efforts of
government and other agencies youth offends in England and Wales are keep
increasing.
 Knife crimes are also being contributed by young offenders and it is making it very
difficult for the population of England and Wales to live there in this kind of dangerous
environment.
 This can be reduced by collective efforts of people living there and government along
with legislative authorities.

REFERENCES
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the orientations of juvenile and adult probation and parole officers. American journal of
criminal justice. 41(2). pp.321-339.
 Pitts, J., 2015. Youth Crime and Youth Justice. Youth & Policy. 114. p.31.
 Sekarwinahyu, M., Rustaman, N.Y., Widodo, A. and Riandi, R., 2019, February.
Development of problem based learning for online tutorial program in plant development
using Gibbs’ reflective cycle and e-portfolio to enhance reflective thinking skills. In
Journal of Physics: Conference Series. (Vol. 1157, No. 2, p. 022099). IOP Publishing.
 Shepherd, A., 2019. Knife crime: the volunteer doctors teaching lifesaving skills to
teenagers. Bmj.367. p.l6363.
 Smith, J. and Roberts, R., 2015. Reflective practice. Vital Signs for Nurses: An
Introduction to Clinical Observations. pp.222-230.