Wake-up call: Achieving compliance with Youth Justice Orders

Community disposals, which are privileged over custody as a response to young offenders, incorporate both punitive and rehabilitative elements in order to punish, deter and rehabilitate. Failure to comply with them has serious implications for young people, in both the short and longer term. In the literature a clear distinction is made between short term formal compliance with requirements of community orders, and more substantive (less measurable) engagement with the spirit of the endeavour to help young people turn away from crime. The article draws on a small qualitative study of young people in receipt of community orders and YOT workers, to explore aspects of supervision of young people in receipt of community disposals. In particular it focuses on ways in which YOT workers support young people to achieve compliance, how this support is received by young people and the implications for their longer term outcomes. The article suggests that while driven by an imperative to avoid breach among young people, levels and type of support provided may not necessarily enable young people to realize the longer term objective of desistance from crime.