Justice system "entrenches people in poverty", study claims

Scotland's criminal justice system entrenches people in poverty and exacerbates crime, according to an academic study reported today.

The research, by Lesley McAra and Susan McVie of Edinburgh University, is described in a special edition of Scottish Justice Matters, devoted to poverty, inequality and justice. It finds that as well as sometimes leading to violence as a way to empowerment and status, poverty can "shape agency responses" to young people, so that children from deprived backgrounds are twice as likely to face police action than better-off children who commit the same crime.

In a separate paper, Maggie Mellon concludes that the children’s hearing system, in focusing on "needs as well as deeds", paradoxically acts to expose mainly poor children and young people not only to the impact of involvement in justice processes, but to "a very avoidable long term criminal record that immures them in worklessness and poor outcomes".

Other research reported in the issue finds that factors associated with poverty (such as living in social housing) may be linked to experience of chronic victimisation, as well as patterns of offending. The recent fall in crime rates in Scotland has not benefited areas with the most chronic rates of crime. As such areas are also characterised by low educational attainment and poor health, there is potential, it is suggested, for targeted intervention.

The research, the editors state, "makes for difficult and stark reading". Systems set up to reduce crime and victimisation, to support health and welfare, "are failing to address the needs of those made subject to their tutelage, serving instead to label and stigmatise, and to exacerbate rather than diminish poverty and violence".

They suggest "five immediate steps" to transform the state we are in, including:

• more resource for educational interventions;
• more employment opportunities and overhaul of the benefits system;
• reform of the system for disclosure to employers of childhood convictions;
• reform of decision-making practices "to address the pernicious consequences of labelling and provide real and meaningful multi-agency practice";
• stop making criminal justice the default response to poverty and focus the attention of the law and of government on redistribution rather than retribution.

Professor McVie said the findings "raised impoortant questions about whether inequality is being adequately tackled by the Scottish Government". A Government spokesperson said inequality was being "tackled head-on through a number of initiatives".