The perfect storm - a moment for decarceration

The metaphorical use of the term ‘perfect storm’ has been applied to the conditions that led to a decrease in the level of incarceration for children in England and Wales in the 1980s. The three main factors seen as contributing to this reduction were; the prevailing economic conditions that exposed the spiralling cost of incarceration, a pragmatic political administration that became receptive to professional bodies in criminal justice organisations with practice and research expertise, and a radical, organised set of practitioners, passionate about the abolition of custody as a response to criminal behaviour by children and young people. This paper examines contemporary political, economic and other factors (both local and global) in order to make comparisons with those factors experienced in the early 1980s and to consider whether the reduction in custody rates achieved in the 1980s might also be a consequence of the changes in penal policy currently being formulated. More generally, it asks how these changes in ‘penal policy’ might impact on criminal justice practice with children and young people. The constitutive conditions for such a perfect storm discussed in the paper include the ‘global recession’ and associated ‘austerity measures’, and policy initiatives from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. These are treated speculatively, considering them in the light of contemporary understandings of the social constructions of youth and anti-social behaviour, as well as within wider discourses, such as those surrounding the notion of globalisation. Decarceration here is contextualised within the wider concept of deinstitutionalisation.