The Scottish Government

« Previous | Contents | Next »

Listen

Section Two: Methods

2.1 A range of qualitative and quantitative methods were drawn upon in the evaluation. They are described briefly in this section of the report.

Analysis of marking decisions by Procurators Fiscal

2.2 From the start of the pilot in Airdrie, the Youth Court Procurators Fiscal provided information about marking decisions in respect of relevant young people reported to them by the police. The information provided included the age and sex of the young person, whether there were any co-accused, whether other incidents had been rolled up with this one, whether the case was discussed with the social work department or the Children's Reporter, whether the case met 'persistency criteria' or 'contextual criteria' ⁶, the case outcome, the route of the referral and, for those prosecuted in the Youth Court, the date of charge that triggered the report. An additional space was provided for Procurators Fiscal to record any other observations about the case. This information was provided on 2,236 cases reported by the police to the Procurator Fiscal until mid-February 2006 and enabled some comparison to be made between Procurator Fiscal marking outcomes and the characteristics of reported cases.

Analysis of cases prosecuted in the Youth Court

2.3 Information on cases prosecuted in the Youth Court was collected by the Youth Court Co-ordinator. The database provided information about the characteristics of young people and the progress of cases through the Youth Court. The daily court sheets completed by the court clerk were the main source of information. Supplemental information came from other agencies involved in the court process. An anonymised version of the co-ordinator's database was provided to the research team. This provided details of 2,236 cases prosecuted in the Youth Court from June 2004 to the end of December 2005. If charged on more than one occasion, young people could feature in more than one case. For example, where an individual was prosecuted for 2 separate cases on the same day, these were treated as separate cases if this was how the court regarded them. Young people with multiple cases may have had them merged (with the cases being heard on the same day) as they progressed through court.

Analysis of data provided by the Scottish Children's Reporters Association

2.4 In order to gather information on the previous involvement of young people prosecuted in the Youth Court with the Children's Hearings System, the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration ( SCRA) provided information held on their national Referral Administration Database ( RAD). This covered whether, since RAD was rolled out in 2002, the young person had been referred to the Children's Reporter (Reporter), the details of such referrals and the Reporters' and Hearings' decisions, including whether to make supervision requirements. In order to maintain the anonymity of young people, the Youth Court co-ordinator forwarded the name, date of birth, SCRO number ⁷ and date of first appearance in the Youth Court directly to SCRA. This enabled SCRA to provide the researchers with individually anonymised data from RAD. It was not possible to link this information to other records collected. The analysis focused upon all referrals recorded on RAD while taking some account of the variable length of time for which information was available in individual cases. Because information was not available prior to 2002, the data are likely, if anything to underestimate the extent of historic involvement with the Children's Hearing System.

Analysis of social work data

2.5 It was intended that information be gathered on the characteristics of young people referred to the Youth Court and the services provided to those made subject to probation orders and structured deferred sentences. While some basic demographic data (age, sex) was available from the Youth Court database, it was envisaged that information held by the social work department would provide for a richer profile of Youth Court cases. Requirements of the Data Protection Act meant that it was not possible to access social work files directly. Instead, it was agreed that relevant data could be provided anonymously from the Social Work Information System ( SWIS) in an electronic format. However it transpired that much of the information required was not in electronic format and that extracting it manually would be a very time-consuming exercise that was not feasible within the resource and time constraints on the research.

2.6 Alternative approaches were taken to secure additional information about the services provided to young people who were sentenced in the Youth Court. First, the groupwork project to which most individuals given supervisory disposals by the Youth Court were referred (Community Alternatives) provided anonymised information about the services made available to young people. Second, one of the Youth Court social workers provided anonymised information about the characteristics of and services provided to a sample of 39 young people who had been sentenced in the Youth Court between July and December 2005. Third, information on the background of all young people given orders (probation orders, community service orders and restriction of liberty orders) by the Airdrie Youth Court was provided by the Youth Justice Social Work Co-ordinator from North Lanarkshire Council. These data referred to Social Enquiry Reports completed prior to sentencing throughout the pilot period of the Airdrie Youth Court and related to 118 orders imposed on 90 young people. Although these approaches cannot be said to provide a comprehensive or representative overview of Youth Court cases and the interventions undertaken with them, the data thus generated are included to provide a flavour of aspects of the circumstances of the young people sentenced in the Youth Court.

Interviews with professionals

2.7 Interviews were conducted with a range of professionals associated with the Airdrie Youth Court. The purpose of these interviews was to elicit views about the operation and effectiveness of the Youth Court and its associated processes. A total of 71 professional interviews took place: 31 interviews after the court had been operational for around 6 months and 32 conducted between October 2005 and January 2006. The first round sample consisted of 4 Sheriffs from Airdrie Sheriff Court; the clerk and sheriff clerk; the Youth Court Co-ordinator and Deputy Co-ordinator; 9 social workers (including the Children and Families and Justice Manager, Youth Justice Co-ordinator, court social worker and 6 social workers); 3 Procurators Fiscal; 5 police officers; one Reporter to the Children's Panel; and 5 defence agents. The second round sample consisted of 4 Sheriffs; the clerk; the Youth Court Co-ordinator and Deputy Co-ordinator; 9 social work staff (including the Depute Head of Social Work Services; the Youth Justice co-ordinator for Lanarkshire, 2 court social workers, 3 youth justice social workers and 2 group workers); one reporter to the Children's Panel; 3 Defence Agents; 2 Procurators Fiscal; and 10 police officers (including 2 duty officers, 2 case management officers, a Chief Inspector, a Superintendent, 2 community officers and 2 court officers). Subject to the agreement of respondents, all of the interviews were tape recorded and transcribed.

Interviews with young people

2.8 Five interviews with young people who were made subject to Youth Court orders took place between October and December 2005. The purpose of these interviews was to elicit young people's experiences of and views about the Youth Court and the services they received through it. It had not been intended that interviews with young people would form a substantial part of the Airdrie Youth Court evaluation. Social work staff reported a significant refusal rate amongst the young people who were approached to participate in the research. Three other young people consented to be interviewed but employment and others commitments served as an obstacle to participation, with one citing having so many appointments with different people through her order as a reason for not participating in the research. Whilst it would have been preferable to have had more control over the composition of the sample, recruitment of interviewees proved challenging and a pragmatic approach had to be adopted, with interviews arranged through the supervising social worker. This restricted the small sample to those who were currently engaged with the social work department (that is, those who had breached their Orders were not included) and their views cannot be considered representative of all young people made subject to supervisory orders through the Youth Courts.

Completion of questionnaires by supervising social workers

2.9 To obtain feedback on the progress made by young people sentenced in the Youth Court, social workers involved in the supervision of young people given Probation Orders or Structured Deferred Sentences by the Youth Court were invited to complete questionnaires regarding the focus of intervention and the young person's progress approximately 6 months after the making of the Order. As had previously occurred in Hamilton ⁸, attempts to encourage social workers to complete the questionnaires met with limited success. Twenty questionnaires in total were completed (16 relating to probationers and 4 to young people subject to structured deferred sentences), mostly by the dedicated Youth Court social workers, and they cannot therefore be viewed as a definitive record of all work that took place. However they provide some indication of the focus and perceived effectiveness of the interventions with which young people were engaged.

Observation of the Youth Court in operation

2.10 Observation was undertaken of the various stages of the Youth Court. The aim was to note and record the process of making judgements and to make an assessment of whether the same sheriff dealt with cases at different stages of the court process. A pro forma observation schedule was used to record the court sessions observed. It included details of those present, the duration of each session, the content and nature of the interactions between the various parties (Sheriffs, offenders, Procurators Fiscal, defence agents and social workers) and the proportion of time in which the bench and the offender were engaged directly in a dialogue. Observation was undertaken of all the points where offenders appear for sentencing (referrals, intermediate diets and trial diets), reviews of orders and breaches of orders (see Table 2.1). Two of the Youth Court Sheriffs were observed over 7 days between September 2004 and October 2005 involving 145 separate case stage observations. Nineteen cases concerning young women (13%) and 126 cases concerning young men (87%) were observed. The duration of time spent observing the court on each day varied from 3 hours to 6 hours depending on the nature of the cases.

Table 2.1: Observed stages of the Youth Court process

Note: Percentages do not sum to 100 due to rounding

Analysis of the progress of Sheriff Summary cases

2.11 One of the aims of the Youth Court is to enable the fast-tracking of cases to and through the court. An exercise was therefore undertaken to compare the timescales of Youth Court cases with cases going through the Airdrie Sheriff Summary Court. Following discussions with the Airdrie Sheriff Court clerks, the Scottish Court Service were approached to obtain information about the timeframes of case processing, stages at which guilty pleas were entered etc. in relation to adult cases calling at Airdrie Sheriff Summary Court during the pilot period. The Scottish Court Service were unable to resource this task to completion so it was therefore decided to gather this information from the court sheets and associated hard copy documents held at the court itself. Due to the resource intensive and time consuming nature of such a task, rather than examine all cases, a decision was made to sample between 100 and 150 citation cases brought before the court during the pilot period. New cases call in Airdrie Sheriff Summary Citation Court for the first time every second Tuesday. Sampling the citation cases calling at all of the diets falling within a particular month (sufficiently historical to allow the completion of most cases) during the pilot period was seen as the preferable method of gathering this information. The month of March 2005 was selected, yielding 3 diets and a total of 140 cases relating to 148 individuals ¹⁰. This constituted a sufficiently sized sample to compare usefully with the data from the Airdrie Youth Court.

Analysis of documentary material

2.12 Relevant documentary material was scrutinised to obtain insights into the operation of the Youth Court and to identify operational issues arising during the period of implementation and early operation. This included the Youth Court Information and Reference Document and minutes of the Implementation Group Meetings (the multi-agency Youth Court Advisory Forum).

Analysis of sentencing patterns following the introduction of the Youth Court

2.13 In order to establish the way young people were sentenced at a summary level in Airdrie before and after the introduction of the Youth Court in June 2004, the Scottish Executive's Justice Statistics Unit provided details of sentencing in Airdrie Sheriff Court in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. This analysis focused on the impact of the Youth Court on summary level sentencing of 15-17 year olds with a view to identifying whether the absolute and proportionate use of different disposals had changed following the introduction of the Youth Court.

Analysis of changes in recorded crime

2.14 To assess whether the operation of the Youth Court had impacted upon recorded crime levels in the area covered by it, recorded crime figures for the 2003 and 2005 calendar years were requested from Strathclyde Police for their operational areas serving Airdrie and Ayr Sheriff Courts and from Central Scotland Police for the region covered by Falkirk Sheriff Court. The 2 comparison courts were selected on the basis of their local authorities having a similar socio-economic profile to North and South Lanarkshire, the local authorities serving the Airdrie and Hamilton Sheriff Youth Courts. As Airdrie Youth Court commenced in June 2004, it was decided to compare the first full year (2003) prior to the introduction of the Youth Court to the first full year of the Youth Court's operation (2005).

2.15 Recorded crime statistics are dependent on the level of crime reported to, and subsequently recorded by, the police. Evidence from the 2003 Scottish Crime Survey suggests that 49 per cent of crimes in 2002 were reported to the police ¹¹. Historically reported crimes were only subsequently recorded as crimes if the police deemed there to be evidence of a crime having taken place. However, under the new Scottish Crime Recording Standard introduced for the 2004/05 financial year the recording of crime became victim led, meaning that reported incidents were more likely to be recorded as crimes ¹². Obviously these changes in police recording made direct comparison between 2003 and 2005 figures problematic as like with like were not being compared. The greatest impact of the new standard was predicted to be on minor crimes such as vandalism; the type of offence commonly dealt with in a summary court. However it should also be recognised that even if there had not been a change in recording standards any changes in recorded crime could be caused by a variety of factors independent of the impact of any changing court process.

Analysis of reconviction data

2.16 To examine whether the Youth Court had an impact upon recidivism among those appearing before it, aggregate rates of reconviction were assessed for young people sentenced in the Youth Court and in 3 comparison courts: Airdrie Sheriff Summary Court, Ayr Sheriff Court and Falkirk Sheriff Court. As with the recorded crime data, the comparison courts were selected on the basis of their local authorities having a similar socio-economic profile to North Lanarkshire, the local authority serving the Airdrie Youth Court. The Scottish Executive Justice Statistics Unit provided information on convictions among those sentenced in these courts during the Youth Court's first year of operation (June 2004 to end of May 2005). Reconviction (excluding pseudo reconvictions ¹³) was only assessed for young people aged 19 or under at first sentence (to focus the analysis on the Youth Court's target age group).

2.17 The data provided was for convictions up to the end of 2005. Because of the short time frame of the study, these data were provisional and incomplete. Moreover, a 2-year follow-up period following adjudication is generally accepted as being required to provide a more accurate picture of the impact of different disposals upon recidivism. Because of the short timescale this was not possible in the present study (though a longer term reconviction follow-up of young offenders sentenced in Hamilton Sheriff Youth Court was also undertaken and these data are presented in an integrated Youth Court Pilot research report).

« Previous | Contents | Next »