Russian Study

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doi:10.1093/bjc/azl030 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL. (2007) 47 , 222Advance Access publication 3 October 2006

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The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD).All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals. [email protected]

RUSSIA AND YOUTH CRIME

A Comparative Study of Attitudes and their Implications MARY MCA ULEY and K ENNETH I. MACDONALD*

We present, within a comparative context, data from the first Russian research on attitudes to youth crime and sentencing. In Russia, the harsh treatment of young offenders, which existed in the Soviet period, has softened, but welfare-oriented juvenile justice still awaits legislative approval. We assess whether the Russian public would support such a reform agenda. Comparing the Russian data with research, conducted in England and Wales and other countries in which a more punitive response has been adopted in recent years, we find unexpected similarities, and contrasting attitudes, and a strong welfare orientation among the Russian public. We seek explana-

tions, and suggest factors influencing attitudes towards young offenders that future comparative research should take into account.

Introduction

Since the 1980s, politicians in North America, followed by their counterparts in Englandand Wales, and to some extent in Holland, have moved away from the welfareapproach that dominated policy towards young offenders for most of the twentiethcentury. In Russia, in contrast, in recent years sentencing policy towards the young hassoftened, and proposals to make the criminal justice system in relation to youngoffenders more welfare-oriented are on the legislative agenda (although progressingmore slowly than is required under Russias commitments to UN and Council of Europe conventions). In America, harsher policies include greater use of adult courts(for younger children), and greater reliance on custodial sentencing. The UnitedStates may be in a league of its own with alarming figures for its young prisoners, but those for England and Wales are among the highest in Europe (Bottoms and Dignan2004: 26, 107; Graham 2002: 78, 93; Muncie 2004: 16870; Snyder 2002). In Russia,numbers of young people in custody have fallen dramatically since 2000 (though, as apercentage of the age cohort, they are still higher than those in Europe, even if nowhere near the US level), and Russia still has no separate juvenile justice system(Fund NAN 2006; Centre for Legal and Judicial Reform 2006; Nevolya 2005; RussianFederation 2005). 1 The changes are clear; less clear is the future direction of Russian

* Mary McAuley, International Centre for Prison Studies, School of Law, Kings College London, 2629 Drury Lane, London,WC2B 5RL; [email protected]. Kenneth I. Macdonald, Nuffield College, Oxford, OX1 1NF; [email protected]. We are grateful to Mike Hough and Julian Roberts for comments on an earlier version of this article.

1 Numbers in detention in Russia (remand and custody): 37,000 (in 2000), 29,500 (2001), 26,700 (2002), 19,000 (2003), 24,500(2004), 21,500 (2005) from Moscow Centre for Prison Reform (2006). Comparative data must be treated with great caution, givendifferent reporting and statistical practices, and different types of closed institutions. Given differences in the age of criminalresponsibility, they include different age cohorts: for example, the US numbers will include 1218-year-olds, the Russian 1418-year-olds. The following estimates of detention per 10,000 of the under-18 age group give an indication of the variation betweencountries. All for 2002: USA 14.0 (or 102,000 children); Russia 7.5 (or 26,700); England and Wales 2.3; France 0.6; Sweden 0.06(NACRO 2003: 9; US and Russia figures calculated from official census data and Dept/Ministry of Justice data).
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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policy towards young offenders. Within the Russian academic, legal and non-governmental organization (NGO) communities, there are voices calling for furtherreform, beginning with new methods of working with children at risk and ending withcommunity involvement in the care of those freed from detention. Scattered local initi-

atives are underway, in which NGOs have succeeded in involving judges, officials fromthe prison service or local government agencies in pilot projects, but progress remainspainfully slow (Abramkin and Gordeyeva 2003; Indeks/dosye na tsenzuru 2002;Kulikova 2005; Maksudov 2001; Nevolya 2005).

It was in this context that, in 2004, sociologists in three Russian citiesSt Petersburg,Saratov and Ulyanovskundertook a study of attitudes towards crime by youngpeople and towards the treatment of young offenders. This is the first systematicresearch that has been conducted on Russian attitudes to these issues, though thereexist Russian publications on youth crime and juvenile justice, ranging from crimino-logical data to legal procedural discussions, from human rights monitoring toinformation, albeit limited, on practices in other countries (Fliamer 2000; Indeks/

Dosye na tsenzuru 2002; Moscow Centre for Prison Reform 2006; Fund NAN 2006;Zabryanskii and Yemelyanova 2000). The 2004 study, which had a clear policy orienta-tion, looked at attitudes of three different groups: first, professionals who work withyoung people (school-teachers, police, judges, advocates, staff from closed schools,penal institutions, and local authority commissions on juvenile affairs); second, youngpeople themselves, including both law-abiding and young offenders; and third, theadult population. Part of the aim was to draw policy makers, professionals and a widerpublic into a more informed discussion of how society should treat its children. Preliminary results of the research were presented at round tables, which brought together repre-sentatives of the different agencies, criminologists and the media, in Moscow, and inthe three cities, in the autumn of 2004, and prompted renewed efforts at local level toadvance the reform agenda. 2

The research simultaneously produced a valuable data base for a comparative study of attitudes to youth crime and punishment. Here, we present, within a cross-country context, results from one component of the tripartite study: the responses from theadult population. Part of our aim is descriptive and comparative, for these are uniquedata on a significant aspect of a complex society. Our more ambitious aim is, througharticulation of the structure of these attitudes, to venture some assessment of the moti-vators and constraints upon the development of Russian policy towards youth crime.

The adult survey was comparative in genesis. In April 2003, for England and Wales, ablock of around 30 questions on attitudes to youth crime and justice was included inthe Office of National Statistics (ONS) Omnibus Survey, with the questions posed dur-ing a face-to-face interview conducted by professionally trained interviewers (anachieved sample of 1,792 people aged 16 or over; the response rate was 67 per cent;Hough and Roberts 2004). The Russian team consciously drew upon some of thesequestions, adapted them to make them appropriate for Russian respondents, andadded further questions. The questionnaire was piloted in Moscow. The final survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews (approximately 45 minutes) by trained

2 The lead author of the present article put the original idea for such a study to the Russian sociologists. The project was organ-ized by the Institute for Independent Social Research, St Petersburg and funded by the Ford Foundation and the British FCO. A brochure, Prestupleniye i nakazaniye nesovershennoletnikh pravonarushitelei (Tsentr nezavisimykh sotsiologicheskikh issledovanii2004), was produced for the roundtables.


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interviewers in March 2004 with a 500 sample of the adult population (1870 years) ineach of St Petersburg, Saratov and Ulyanovsk, identified on a random walk principle.The Levada Centre, the leading survey research centre in Russia, carried out the sur-vey, following consultations with the team of sociologists from the three cities. In each

city the professional interview teams continued until they had completed 500 inter-views. The sample of 1500, taken as a whole, was representative demographically of thecities population with slight under representation of single householders and over rep-resentation of those with higher education (a usual feature of this type of survey). 3

The history of the treatment of young offenders over the past 50 years in Russia andin the United States or England and Wales is very different, as are aspects of the justicesystem: continental versus common law, the court and prosecution system, the degreeof public involvement, and the role of social services. 4 The wider social environmentsdiffer, and, to belabour the obvious, Russia, over the past 15 years, has experienceddevastating social change, as well as the novelty of open public discussion of crime andthe criminal justice system. Should we not expect, from these two contrasting contexts,

that the general publics would have different perceptions of youth crime and that viewsof the justice system and of appropriate sanctions would differ? Surveys conducted inEnglish-speaking countries provide evidence of some common responses and, at thesame time, some significant differences in popular views between these societies, inparticular as regards the appropriate harshness of punishment and the age of responsi-bility (Roberts 2004). How do Russian attitudes compare, and can we offer convincingexplanations for any similarities or differences? Clearly, survey data alone will not resolve the issues, but they may raise doubts over existing explanations, and they cansuggest directions for further research.

Popular Attitudes and Penal Policy

Stimulating new analyses of the shift in penal policy in the United States and somecountries of Western Europe have drawn attention to the question of the relationshipbetween popular attitudes and penal policy (Roberts and Hough 2002). Features of late-modern society may be critical for Garland, status distinctions and attitudes towards thestate for Whitman, but there is wide agreement among criminologists that cultural sen-sibilities or social attitudes influence outcomes, and that politicians play a key role(Garland 2001; Whitman 2003; Muncie 2004; Melossi 2000). Politicians and lawmakersmore in some societies than in othersclaim to respond to the publics concerns. Not everywhere do they push for tougher policies to tackle the issue of youth crime (theScandinavian countries, including Finland, remain committed to welfarism and low

3 St Petersburg is Russias second city, with a population of over 4 million. Saratov and Ulyanovsk are both Volga cities with pop-ulations of less than 1 million; their recorded juvenile crime statistics put them in the average category for Russian regions,although, in 2002 and 2003, St Petersburg experienced a much sharper drop in recorded crime than did Saratov or Ulyanovskregions (MVD RF, 2004). One reason for choosing these three cities was to discover whether the pilot projects that had been underway in St Petersburg and Saratov, and not in Ulyanovsk, had increased awareness of a juvenile justice reform agenda (see, further,below).

4 The age of criminal responsibility in Russia is 14 for more serious and 16 for less serious crimes. Children of 14 and above canbe held in a remand centre (SIZO) while awaiting trial before adult courts and, if sentenced to detention, serve the sentence in aclosed vospitatelnaya koloniya (educational colony). These are barrack-like institutions, with educational facilities and workshops but based on a military-like regime. They may be far from homehundreds if not thousands of miles, especially in the case of girls (forwhom there are only three such institutions in the whole of Russia). Most Russian adult prisoners serve their sentences in closedcolonies, not in prisons.


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detention rates) but, where they do, politicians claim (and may believe) that they areresponding to public demands. United States lawmakers lead the field, but ever sinceJohn Majors suggestion in 1993 that we should condemn a little more and understanda little less (quoted by Muncie 1999: 5), British politicians from both major parties

have been anxious to show that they support tough action against young offenders. Pol-iticians in Western democracies, Roberts suggests, seldom introduce legislation andcite public opinion as the cause. Far more often legislative preambles cite the serious-ness of the problem and the understandable public concern that has arisen. However,public opinion demonstrably affects penal policy . . . there appears little reason tobelieve that juvenile justice policy making will be impervious to political pressuredriven by public anxiety about the problem (Roberts 2004: 522).

In Russia, politicians do not claim that their decisions on juvenile justice policy reflect what the public wants. However, they may be influenced by what they perceiveto be popular demandsdemands of which they approve. Krajewski (2004), writingabout Poland, has suggested that after a period inspired by harm reduction (soften-

ing the harsh penal environment inherited from the Soviet period), the neo-liberaleconomic and social policies and media attention, which Garland sees as fanning puni-tive responses, may encourage the resurfacing of traditional policies of social exclu-sion and stigmatization. Given earlier traditions, Eastern Europe, in moving towardsthe West, could experience serious penal regression. This argument, if translated toRussia, would suggest that as Russia continues to experience the strains and stresses of modernizing its economy and society, we should not be surprised to find politiciansseeking and receiving support from the public for more repressive measures against adult criminals.

The Levada Centre (originally the VTsIOM Research Centre) has been putting ques-tions on crime and sentencing policy to representative samples of the adult Russianpopulation since 1989. Questions have tended to be of the type: Which of the follow-ing measures would, in your view, be most likely to lead to a reduction in crime? or Inyour view would softer sentencing or harsher sentencing lead to a reduction in crime,or would neither make a difference? We can assume that when faced with such ques-tions, respondents think primarily of adult criminals. It is not always easy to interpret the results (or to compare them over time), but they suggest that by the turn of the cen-tury, perhaps half the adult population, while critical of the judicial system and policeperformance, thought that harsher sentencing would have an impact on crime. Thereis little support for softer sentencing. A (surprising) third of the population would not disapprove of introducing public corporal punishment for offenders (February 2000).Support for the death penalty, while declining, is still high. 5

But would politicians be right to claim that the Russian public would welcomeharsher policies towards young offenders? Is there a cultural underlay which favourssocial exclusion and stigmatization of teenagers or, despite neo-liberal moderniza-tion, are there social attitudes in Russia which could support more tolerant policiestowards young people?

5 The most recent poll, by the Levada Centre, suggests that support for the death penalty has fallen from 79 per cent in 2002 to65 per cent in 2005, with those opposed up from 17 to 25 per cent. Other data (a survey conducted in 1999, three in 2000, and onein 2005) are provided by the Levada Centre from the VTsIOM archive (Levada Centre 2005). (When VTsIOM was taken over, in2002, by intervention from the government, the staff left en bloc and formed a new institutionthe Levada Centre.)


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Knowledge of Youth Crime

The recording of attitudes towards youth crime is frequently pursued through ques-tions asking respondents to compare their preferences to what-is-the-case (sentencingtoo harsh?, police doing a good job?). Clearly, the comparator is not what-is-the-casebut what-the-respondent-perceives-to-be-the-case (the perceived sentence, the per-ceived police behaviour). Two respondents with identical ideal worlds but different understanding of the present facts will, on such measures, appear to have different attitudes. At one level, this is a measurement problem (which is why we, below, focuson some examples in which respondents evaluate particular strategies in a way that isless sensitive to other knowledge). At another, and perhaps deeper, level, the interpen-etration of fact and value is an ineluctable characteristic of our thinking about theworld. What we think about what ought to be done about juvenile crime is, of neces-sity, driven by our assessment of its frequency and our understanding of its genesis. 6But the public opinion research conducted in the United States, Canada and Englandand Wales reveals a population very poorly informed about the incidence, and type, of crime committed by youngsters, and even the gender of young offenders.

There is some evidence across several countries, against a background of stable orfalling crime rates, that violent crime, which everywhere accounts for only a smallpercentage of youthful crime, is increasing, and that there is a very small minority of youth who are the serious, repeat offenders (Dunkel and Drekhan 2003: 39, 96104;Estrada 2001; Junger-Tass 2002: 356; Mehlbye and Walgrave 1998: 2153; Van derLaan 2004). Yet, in answer to the question Do you think the number of young offenders(or crime by young people) has increased, stayed the same, decreased over the past twoyears?, between 60 and 90 per cent of the respondents reply that there has been a sig-nificant increase. Further, people assume that young people are responsible for amuch more significant share of all crime than is the case. Where the correct figure

would be between 10 and 20 per cent, depending upon the country, a majority of respondents put it at 4055 per cent. It is the same as regards violent crime. A 1996 Cal-ifornia survey found that 60 per cent of respondents thought young people wereresponsible for most of the violent crime registered by the police, whereas in fact they were involved in only 13 per cent of recorded violent crimes (Roberts 2004: 50001).As for the type of offences that young people commit, more than a third of the Englishand Welsh respondents in 2003 reckoned that the majority of crimes committed by juveniles were violent, whereas 20 per cent would be a more realistic figure, and, incomparative terms, even this is high. Finally, although the majority of respondents cor-rectly identified boys as more likely than girls to commit offences, in 1998, a surprisingthird of respondents considered girls more likely (Hough and Roberts 2004: 1314;

Mattinson and Mirrlees-Black 2000: 1314).7

Girls everywhere constitute only 1015per cent of young offenders who receive official attention.The Russian public is as badly informed as its US or English and Welsh counterparts,

and, on certain points, misperceptions are strikingly similar (see Table 1). Recorded

6 David Hume in his Essays , despite his segregation of is and ought, makes many such moves.7 The 2003 ONS survey (Hough and Roberts 2004) and the 1998 British Crime Survey (Mattinson and Mirrlees-Black 2000) con-

tain common questions and others specific to one or other survey. We draw upon the published analysis from both these surveys,selecting as appropriate to allow a comparison with the Russian data.


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Russian youth crime did indeed increase rapidly between 1987 and the mid-1990s, bothin terms of absolute numbers of young people and the percentage of the 1417-year-old age group, but the figures then began to move downwards. The year 1999, follow-ing the financial crisis, saw an increase, but the decline then continued until 2003,when the figures began to level off. Numbers (and the percentage of the age group)are now back roughly to the 1987 figures. (As everywhere, a mass of illegal actions by young people go unreported but there is no evidence that the volume of this latentunreported crime is moving in a different direction from that of recorded crime (MVDRF 1996; 2002; 2004).) Perceptions do not appear to be tracking national trends. Nordo they capture local variations. In St Petersburg, where recorded crime droppedsharply, 62 per cent of our respondents reckoned it had increased over the past twoyears; and the order of perception does not match the order of change across our threecities. Since the mid-1990s, apart from the blip in 1999, Russian trends seem to be simi-lar to those of many other countries in the northern hemisphere. The percentage of violent crimes among all recorded youth crimes, including murder, has risen and con-tinues to rise (from 8.4 per cent of all juvenile convictions in 1997 to 11.7 per cent in2003). Theft, everywhere the key youth crime, has fallen sharply (MVD RF 2004;Gilinskii 2005; for the earlier period, Pridemore 2002) despite the increased and irre-sistible opportunity presented by the arrival of the mobile phone.

Sixty-three per cent of Russian respondents think that boys are more likely than girlsto commit offences, but a third think that they are both equally likely (the recordedfigures show a ratio of 9:1). A significant proportion of respondents overestimate thepercentage of juvenile crime that is associated with violence: 31 per cent thought themajority of juvenile crime is violent, and a further 26 per cent found it difficult to say,while the recorded data indicate less than 12 per cent. But where the Russian answerswere most seriously out of line with reality was in answer to the questions relating toalcohol or drugs. Less than a quarter of those registered by the police for an offenceare under the influence of alcohol, but 90 per cent of the respondents reckoned themajority. Around 3 per cent of all convictions are drug-related (and less than 1 per cent of recorded crimes are committed under the influence of drugs), but 77 per cent of respondents considered that the majority of crimes committed by young people aredrug-related. The children surveyed had a better sense: 80 per cent thought boys weremore likely; they also did better on percentage of violent crimes, on alcohol and on

TABLE 1 Perceptions of youth crime trends

* When the respondent clearly found it difficult to express an opinion, the Russian interviewer was instructed totick this box, not to attempt to force an answer. This strategy partly contributes to the higher Russian DK figure;to ease comparison, the percentages are reported separately for respondents who did express a view.

In your opinion, has crime by youngpeople over the past two years:

Russia 2004(three cities, 1,500)

England and Wales 2003(1,691)

All Giving view All Giving viewincreased? 66 75 75 79stayed the same? 19 21 17 18decreased? 3 3 2 2[Has difficulty in answering *] 12 5

100% 100% 100% 100%


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drugs. This may well be because most juvenile crime involves youngsters targetingtheir peers (common across all societies) and hence they have more first-hand experi-ence. They fared no better on has crime increased . . . ?a very difficult question toanswer from experience? If we construct an ignorance of crime variable, grouping

respondents answers to three questionson gender, violence and drug-relatedcrimethe three questions which should have been the easiest to answer correctly, wefind that 19 per cent gave incorrect answers to our three questions (and only 5 per cent got all three right). For comparison, in the 1998 British Crime Survey, which containedfour knowledge questions, 14 per cent got all four wrong (Mattinson and Mirrlees-Black 2000: 1415).

How can we explain the exaggerated and mistaken picture of youth crime? Westernresearchers have emphasized the importance of sources of information, and in particularmedia reporting which, according to their respondents, is the main source of informa-tion, followed by talking to other people. The media, some conclude, with their focuson violent and extreme cases, play a key role in influencing perceptions (Muncie 1999:

1113; Roberts 2004: 51518; Mattinson and Mirrlees-Black 2000: 14). Politicians, too,may encourage alarmist perceptions by their insistence on the need for tough action.This explanation would only partly work for Russia. Russian adults get their informa-

tion overwhelmingly from television, with almost all citing this as a major source;slightly less than half the respondents also cited colleagues, friends and newspapers,journals, and perhaps a third the radio. But there is no real equivalent to the tabloidpress, and although television devotes considerable attention to lurid crime incidents,almost always these involve adultsalthough it is possible that in the absence of infor-mation, the public may generalize from media reporting on adult crime and violent cases (Sprott 1966 on Canada). Serious media discussion is minimal, official statisticsare not widely published, nor are there any crime or self-report surveys. 8 Both mediaand politicians draw attention to youth problemshomeless, abandoned children,alcoholic families, unemployed youth, drugsbut Russian politicians, unlike theirWestern colleagues, do not act as cheerleaders for tougher actions. So the media aresomewhat similar (but less focused on youth crime), the political environment is differ-ent, and there is no Western parallel to the Russian experience of open discussion aftera long history of censorship of crime reporting.

Is it perhaps that across all these societies that poor knowledge, and anxiety, are asso-ciated with particular social attributes? Though the 1998 BCS and the 2004 Russianstudy present major issues in comparability (not least in handling class), it is possibleto construct some arguable equivalent measures, and to compare their impact onignorance, as defined above. The detailed discussion of the predictors (gender, age,education, social class and tenure, income, and teenagers) appears in Appendix A.

The most striking feature, which lends credence to our comparability claim, is thesimilarity of age and gender effects. It would seem that we are discussing a similarignorance phenomenon. In both societies, women present as more ignorant thanmen (the odds of ignorance, as defined, are about 1.4 times greater for women thanmen), and the old are less informed, and the young more informed, than those inmid-life. But if we grant (on the basis of the detailed discussion in Appendix A and the

8 Under a DFID-supported project, crimevictimization surveys were carried out in Omsk, Smolensk and Volgograd in 2000 and2002. The questions focused on experience of crime and fear of crime, and relations with the police (Beck and Robertson 2003).


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data, in this respect, support Cohens argument that young people have to carry apeculiar burden of representation; their condition is seen as being symptomatic of the health of the nation, or the future of the race, the welfare of the family or the stateof civilization as we know it (Cohen, quoted by Muncie 1999: 11). The providing of

information may help, but it will not solve the problem. Fear of crime, of deviant behaviour, and adult societys doubts about its ability to educate its children properly may colour perceptions, regardless of media attention and politicians claims, andperhaps regardless of policies. A comparative study which included the Scandinaviancountries and Italy (where media reporting and politicians are less alarmist, and morelenient policies towards young offenders operate) would give us a much better sense of the factors which influence popular perceptions. That the explanation may reasonably be sought at a national rather than a local level is given some support by the lack of regional variation in the Russian data. St Petersburg, Saratov and Ulyanovsk are threevery different cities. But if we add city effect dummies to the logistic regression just discussed, we find no significant effects. Once we control for the demographic charac-

teristics, the city characteristics have no detectable impact on levels of knowledge.

Attitudes towards the Criminal Justice System

The counterpoint to the perception of the shape and extent of youth crime is the per-ception of how the state responds, and how it should respond. Only in the UnitedStates does the public rate the performance of the courts in relation to young people at all well. The responses in England and Wales and in Russia are both highly critical, but there are interesting differences in the structure of that criticism (Table 3).

The Western critical responses are closely related to a view that judges are toolenienta view widely shared over the past 20 years in the United States, United Kingdomand Canada, and much cited by politicians.

In England and Wales, just over 90 per cent of those who consider that the courts doa poor job think that judges sentence too lightly (Table 4). The Russian responses,however, are rather different: although more than a quarter think the judges are toolenient, the figure is significantly lower than that of their Western colleagues. Further,the Russian responses show no relationship between rating of courts and views on sen-tencing: less than half of those who consider that the courts do a poor job think that

TABLE 3 Public ratings of criminal justice institutions

(Russia) In your opinion how well or badly do you think the following institutions exercise their responsibilities towards young people? (E/W) How good a job do you think youth courts are doing? DK reports all those who had difficulty in answering. US data from Hough and Roberts (2004: 26).

Do agood job

Neithergood nor bad

Do apoor job

DK

Police (Russia 2003) 4 30 62 5 100%Courts (Russia 2003) 9 45 30 17 100%Youth courts (Eng./Wales 1998) 13 36 44 7 100%Youth courts (Eng./Wales 2003) 11 42 36 12 100%Youth courts (USA 1999) 35 36 29 100%Remand centres (Russia 2003) 4 20 46 30 100%Educational colonies (Russia 2003) 6 26 39 29 100%


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judges sentence too lightly. Something other than perceptions of leniency or harshnessis present in the Russian critical reactions towards court performance.

Perhaps a basic negative response to the work of the criminal justice system? We note(Table 3) that the Russian population has a very low opinion of performance in rela-tion to children by the police, the remand centres and colonies. There are no compa-rable data on UK or US attitudes towards police work and young offender institutions,but the UK responses to the rating of police, prisons, probation service and judges in general (i.e. not with particular reference to their work with young people) show that between 75 and 90 per cent rate their performance as good or fair. 9 Why are Russianadults so dissatisfied with the criminal justice system in relation to young people?Respondents were asked which they considered the main aims of todays system to beand which they would like them to be. The results are given in Table 5.

Whilst punishment and isolation are seen as driving todays criminal justice system, re- education , justice and, only then, punishment are the favoured goals. (The inclusion of justice is unfortunate because the meaning needs to be unpacked.) Although we can-not compare the Russian findings directly with those which have asked respondents tochoose the most important sentencing goal, in the 2003 England and Wales survey, athird favoured deterrence and a third imposing a just sentence ; Canadian respondents put

9 The BCS 1998 survey (Mattinson and Mirrlees-Black 2000: 18) asked for opinions on police and prisons but not specifically inrelation to young people. The question We would like to know how good a job you think . . . x . . . is doing produced for the police, whoreceived the highest rating of any institution, the responses: good, 61 per cent; average, 33 per cent; and poor, 6 per cent. Prisonsreceived: good, 32 per cent; average, 41 per cent; and poor, 27 per cent.

TABLE 4 Views of sentencing policy

* Canadian data from Hough and Roberts (2004: 27); Roberts (2004: 506) presents other similar data.

Do you think that the sentencing of young offenders by the courts is,at present:

Russia 2004 Eng./Wales 2003 Canada 2000*

All Giving view All Giving view

too lenient? 27 35 71 75 77about right? 44 56 20 21 22too harsh? 8 10 3 3 1[Difficult to say ] 22 5

100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

TABLE 5 Russian views on the criminal justice system in relation to young people

Respondents, given the list of options, were asked: In your view, which are the most important aims of todays justicesystem for young people? Choose, please, no more than three answers. They were then asked: And what in yourview, ought to be the main aims of the justice system in relation to young people? A maximum of three answers . . ..Respondents gave, on average, 2.2 responses to are, and 2.5 to should be.

Aims of todays justice system for young people: Are (%): Should be (%): Disparity (%)

To punish an offence 61 40 19

To isolate the offender from society 47 19 28To deter the offender and others 26 15 9To ensure that justice is done 25 55 30To show societys disapproval of the crime 20 32 12To re-educate the offender 24 55 31To compensate the victim for loss of property/damage 16 30 14


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deterrence in first place (Hough and Roberts 2004: 212). Deterrence ranks very low inthe Russian surveymuch lower than compensation to the victim . United States surveysproduce a puzzling picture: they have consistently shown that up to three-quarters of respondents put rehabilitation before punishment as the proper goal of sentencing, yet

they want tougher, longer sentences (Roberts 2004: 512)though, as Arrow hasemphasized, aggregate intransitive preferences are compatible with individually transi-tive preferences. The Russian responses suggest that they see todays policies as those of social exclusion and stigmatization, and would like to see them replaced by a more wel-fare-oriented approach, albeit one which still included a punishment element.

Welfare versus Punitive Attitudes

If a welfare-oriented cast of mind underlies at least some of the criticism of the criminaljustice system, then it becomes important to determine the structure of these attitudes.In particular, are they determined by individual characteristics, or by more general fea-

tures of the society in which they are embedded?The Russian survey contained questions that were aimed at picking up welfare orpunitive attitudes. We selected a subset of these which seemed well defined, and speci-fied an analytic coding frame (with welfare responses coded as minus 1; dont knows as 0;and punitive responses coded as plus 1; details are given in Appendix B). The resultingscale ranged from 8 (extremely welfare minded) through to +8 (extremely puni-tive). We are aware that the mid-points of such summed attitude scales are oftenarbitrary, or, at the very least, subject to the vagaries of the presentation of options. But,in this particular case, we are persuaded, by consideration of the component questions(see Appendix B) and by the relative ease of categorization, that a case can be made fortreating the zero point on this particular scale as veridical. We graph the results for thethree cities studied (Figure 1); the distributions are broadly similar.

In the responses to all the questions, welfare attitudes overshadowed punitive. We givethree examples. In answer to In your view, ought one to impose such a sentence as deten-tion upon a 15-year old who has committed a non-violent crime? If you think one should,then what, in your view, ought to be the maximum period of detention for such a teen-ager?, nearly half the respondents said that detention should not be used, a quarter advo-cated for no more than three months, and a further 15 per cent for a maximum of one year.A question which probed views on causes of recidivism, and allowed respondents up tothree answers, had 70 per cent identifying the lack of community support for those released from detention , with only 18 per cent supporting the idea that some are born with a criminal disposition . Finally, Table 6 shows the distribution of answers to questions on how to reduce crime.

Welfare attitudes are more prevalent. But who are the punishers and the welfarists?Appendix C reports a straightforward multivariate regression, predicting welfare atti-tudes from a range of socioeconomic characteristics. Statistically, both education andknowledge of youth crime are significant (being more educated, more informed shiftsthe respondent in the welfare direction) and being a victim of crime is associated withmore punitive views. 10 There is also a significant non-linear effect from age (below age44, respondents become less punitive as they age; after 44, they become more punitive

10 Ten per cent of respondents replied that they or their family members had been a victim of crime by a young person duringthe past year (only 40 per cent of these reported it to the police).


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FIG. 1 Welfarepunishment variable, by city

s vonayl U

k

gr ub s r e t e P t S

vot ar aS

e c al P

5.000.005.00

Welfare__________________________Punishment

60

40

20

0

60

40

20

0

60

40

20

0

Distribution of welfarepunitive attitudes

TABLE 6 Russian views on appropriate measures to reduce crime by young people

The prompts have been re-ordered for this table. DK reports all those who had difficulty in answering.

Do you agree that the following measures would contributeto reducing crime among young people?

Agree Disagree DK

Expand the work of leisure centres in organizing leisure activities for youths 96 3 1Strengthen the work of schools in organizing leisure activities for children

(clubs, sports, etc.)

95 4 1

Introduce tougher penalties for selling, possessing and taking drugs 89 6 5Carry out government programmes to provide economic, legal, social and othersupport to poor and inadequate families with children

87 9 5

Introduce tougher control of parents who neglect their obligation to bring up theirchildren or who abuse their parental position and harm their children

86 10 4

Instead of detention for young offenders, use other softer types of sentence, such ascommunity work, supervision by a social worker

56 44 14

Impose harsher sentences on young offenders than those used at present 39 44 18Permit the sale, distribution and use of some soft drugs, such as hashish, marihuana 9 86 5


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as they age). But even the most significant interpretable coefficient tells us that the sub-stantive effect is small: being a victim shifts the expected value by about half a point ona 17-point scale of welfare-punitive attitudeshardly a substantial difference. And theoverall variance explained is very low, at around 4 per cent. If the model is expanded

to include the 16-category occupational class variable, if education is disaggregated into itscomponent categories, if we include interactions between class and education, andbetween gender and class and gender and education, even then, the raw R 2 refuses to moveabove 0.1, and the more realistic corrected R 2 (corrected for numbers of predictors)remains resolutely at 0.04. We can admittedly find a small city effect within the largermodel: the inhabitants of Saratov (compared with those of St Petersburg and Ulyanovsk)are, on average, one point more punitive on this 17-point scale (this matches the univariatepicture from the graphs in Figure 1). But this maps neither to the known crime change inthese cities nor to awareness of a juvenile justice reform agenda (see below). We concludethat welfarist attitudes are spread fairly evenly and unstructuredly within the Russian urbanpopulation, and are not determined by standard social characteristics.

Sentencing Preferences

Translation of attitude into action and judgement is again dependent upon the percep-tion of juvenile crime andhere, the effects become reciprocalupon awareness of current behaviour of the courts. But there may also be a difference between abstract pronouncements and assessments of detailed particular cases.

Opinion polls in English-speaking countries produce evidence of publics highly criti-cal of lenient sentencing, but further research finds that people are often poorly informed on sentencing practice, and think sentencing policy is softer than it is. Also,when asked general questions on sentencing preferences, most people think in termsof the worst kind of crimes committed by offenders with the worst records, or of recent media cases which highlighted a soft sentence or a repeat offender. However,when presented with individual cases and additional information, people begin tothink differently, in terms of a real individual rather than a faceless young offender.Further, if offered a wider range of alternative sanctions and case histories, they may change their position from support for detention to one in favour of community service and reparations (Roberts 2004: 513; Hough and Roberts 2004: 2943; Esmee Fairbairn2004: Chapter 2 and 456). What starts out looking like a punitive mind-frame beginsto dissolve into a less coherent and partly welfare-oriented set of attitudes.

Although Russians start out by being less critical of the courts for being too lenient,they, too, as do their Western counterparts, shift ground towards the welfare endwhen asked questions on individual cases. Two-thirds of the Russian respondentsthought that court sentencing was about right or had difficulty in answering (Table 4).Later in the interview, all were presented with a series of individual cases (we cite a fewexamples) and a card of measures to choose from: A 15-year old entered an apartment and stole money, valuables, a videoaudio centre,

and food. Which measures, in your view, should one adopt towards this teenager? A 15-year old took a mobile phone and money off another. How, in your view, ought

one to treat this young offender? And what if the 15-year-old is under the influenceof alcohol or drugs?


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A 15-year old boy attacked a pensioner returning from the Savings Bank, and madeoff with her handbag with money in it.

A 15-year old was arrested for selling drugs in school. Dont consider whether they were hard or soft drugsthe important fact is the selling of drugs in school.

Choice of measures

(1) Have a talk with the teenager and parent.(2) Fine the parents, oblige them to repay the cost.(3) Place on police register.(4) Place in special school.(5) Give a conditional sentencedetention for a further offence.(6) Sentence to detention in a closed educational colony.(7) Other measures (which?).

Here, as elsewhere in the survey, the percentages having difficulty in answering , whichwere quite high on general questions (relating to institutional performance), droppeddramatically (to 5 per cent or less) when the respondent was asked more concrete,individual questions. As expected, there is indeed a significant difference in the kindsof treatment advocated by those who think the courts are too lenient or too harsh. But those who think sentencing is about right , when given individual cases, tend, in theirchoice of appropriate action, to side with those who consider the courts sentence tooharshly, and distance themselves from the punishers (certainly as regards sentencing todetention in a closed educational colony).

If both the Western and Russian data demonstrate that there is a tendency for toughanswers to soften when the researcher digs deeper, it still seems that Russians are morelenient in their attitudes towards children than their North American and English andWelsh counterparts. The Western surveys show stronger support for custody, even for

young children. With the age of criminal responsibility in Russia at 14, custody is not anoption for younger children. They may be sent to closed special schools but only 16 percent of the respondents favoured this option for an 11-year-old robbing a pensioner,and even fewer for one who participated in beating up a homeless street person. The1998 BCS survey, in contrast, found that custody was the preferred British option forviolent offenders, whether 10 or 15 years old. But while English and Welsh respondentsare certainly more in favour of custodial sentences, they may be thinking of a three-month or six-month sentence (short, sharp . . .), the Russians of a three-year sentencein a closed colony hundreds of miles from home. This must be borne in mind, and weaddress the issue in the next section.

Whereas English and Welsh respondents react more sharply to violent offences than

to burglary, the Russian respondents come down much more heavily against a 15-year-old burglar than against one who robs a pensioner or beats up a homeless person. 11Table 7 presents a selection of the responses. Violence, at least for the past two centu-ries, has played a greater part in Russian society than in English and Welsh. It is mani-fested today in high rates of domestic violence, hazing in the army, police brutality andtorture, and homicide. Perhaps violence is not perceived as such a violation of the self as is intrusion into the home, the one safe private place? Perhaps, too, on a more practical

11 Interestingly, the 2000 crimevictimization survey found that respondents were much more worried about being burgled thanbeing attacked or robbed (Beck and Robertson 2003: 37).


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level, given that few have insurance cover, the loss from a burglary is likely to be farmore than from a mugging on the street.

The only offence for which even a quarter of the respondents would favour a custo-dial sentence is that associated with drugs (but sending to a special school pushes thenumbers up), and we see the anxiety about alcohol reflected in the two mobile phonecases. But notice how strongly, across the board, placing on the police register featuresas a favoured option. How can this be squared with the responses in Table 3 that thepolice are doing such a poor job with young people? Maybe, when faced with this list of options, some people find an option they positively favour while others proceed by eliminating those that they positively do not favour (e.g. custody) or that they think will

not work (parental intervention) and end up choosing the police register because,after all, they think that something must be done. This could suggest that, if feasiblealternative measures were available (community service, reparations for damage and abetter use of fines), they would receive support (as was suggested by responses given inTables 5 and 6). But Russian adults know little of such measures: few had heard of juve-nile justice, or restorative justice, and even in the two cities (St Petersburg and Saratov)where there have been projects involving social workers in working with judges, very fewknew of them. Nevertheless, this analysis suggests that there is an underlying receptiveattitude towards such facilities. It would follow that were the outreach policy initiativesdescribed at the start of this paper to receive media dissemination and official encour-agement, they could provide the basis for a juvenile justice reform that had popularsupport. 12

Explaining the Leniency of the Russian Public

How might we explain the greater leniency of the Russian public? Are Russians simply reacting against what is still a harsh system (long sentences served far away from home)

12 The research project revealed, as was expected, even stronger welfarist attitudes and discontent with the present system amongthe professionals who were interviewed, but that is a topic for a different paper.

TABLE 7 Preferences for action: five cases involving a 15-year-old

* The fine option was not included for this question, which may skew the results. The detailed questions aregiven in the text.

Appropriate action? Sells drugsin school

Burgles flat Attacks androbs pensioner

Robs youngsterof mobile/money when drunk

Robs youngsterof mobile/money when sober

Talk to child/parents 4 3 2 3 7Fine parents/repay * 17 20 16 42Put on police register 24 24 40 37 35Special closed school 16 13 18 22 7Conditional sentence(further offence willcarry detention)

25 29 14 14 7

Detention in a colony 28 13 6 4 1Other/difficult to say 3 2 2 4 2Total 100 100 100 100 100


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18

prison work to pay compensation to crime victims (20 per cent), and punishment (16 percent). Punishment is highly rated by a small minority.

The Russian respondents were asked to identify up to three positive (and negative)aspects to detention in a colony. Fifteen per cent could see no positive aspects, and iden-

tified three negative aspects; only three individuals (out of 1,425) could see no negativeaspects to detention and identify three positive factors. Just under 10 per cent identifiedmore positive aspects than negative; 40 per cent emphasized the negative. But which didrate highly as positive? Finish education, get a skill (67 per cent) led the field, as it did inthe English and Welsh survey. Deterrence was identified by 25 per cent; isolation from society , punishment , re-education and cure from drugs were all noted by less than 20 per cent.In contrast, several negative aspects of detention received higher ratings: risk of TB,AIDS topped the list (56 per cent), followed by creating recidivists and becoming a victim of prison brutality (both over 50 per cent), damaging the juveniles psyche (44 per cent),depriving the offender of any future perspectives (32 per cent) and causing moral suffering from isolation (20 per cent). Russian adults have few expectations that a custodial sentence will

deter or rehabilitate a youngster, and little stomach for this kind of punishment. Whilst undoubtedly heightened by the perceived harshness of the extant regime, theseresponses are expressing a welfarist concern, not merely reacting against abuses.

Conclusion

The survey data suggest that the adult Russian population strongly favours a welfarerather than a punitive approach to young offenders. Although there is a small punitivegroup who favour tougher sanctions, there is no evidence of popular support for socialexclusion and stigmatization of young people. In this respect, the Russian public ismore forgiving of its childrens behaviour than those in North America or England andWales. However, across these countries, similarities in the contradictory responses onthe purpose of sentencing, and on detention in particular, suggest that all politiesstruggle with the multiplicity of aims built into the criminal justice system: punishing,awarding just sentences, deterring the offender and others, safeguarding society,re-educating, compensating victims. These are not aims that can be neatly ordered andranked. There are too many aims, and they contradict each other. These tensions areseen most sharply where a criminal justice system is employed as the mechanism fordealing with societys young offenders, when it will always produce a dissatisfied andcritical public.

But the nature of this shared critical response will be influenced by the social or cul-tural environment. The highly critical Russian assessment of the criminal justice systemand, in particular, of detention is surely in part driven by the harshness of the systemand the conditions, from police custody onwards, to which a young offender finds himor herself subjected. But is this enough to explain the welfare-dominant set of attitudes?We suggest that both prevailing (paternalistic) attitudes towards children, strong inRussia, and the welfare ideology inherited from the Soviet period play their part.

Krajewski may be right to argue that in relation to penal policy, the philosophy cameto be nothing more than rhetoric, but that, ironically, is precisely why it remains strongin post-Soviet Russia. By the time Communist-party rule collapsed, the gap between therhetoric and the practice of the criminal justice system had long been clear to all. Now,it was assumed, the gap could be closed by bringing practice into line with welfare


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ideologyan ideology which was part of the Soviet inheritance, just as were the beliefsthat the state ought to look after its people. There was no new ideology lurking in thewings. Welfare assumptions created expectationsand hence the highly critical assess-ment of state institutions and the criminal justice system when they fail to live up to

them. Consider a contrasting polity, with an underlying view that state institutions andthe justice system are basically good institutions, capable of doing what they are inten-ded to be doing. There, when the institutions fail to cope with youth crime, argumentsare advanced that these institutions need a new focusif welfare has not worked,then, comes the argument, give them a new punitive ideology and they will respondeffectively. Russias history constructs a different response.

Such an analysis may suggest a possible answer to the large question of future direc-tion with which we began. At the very least, the comparative exercise has allowed us toidentify unexpected differences and similarities which require us to rethink certaincurrent assumptions and explanations. Perhaps, most valuable of all, the comparisondirects our attention to the importance of underlying attitudes towards the state, and

towards the child, to the role ideology or rhetoric may play in a society, and to inbuilt contradictions in the criminal justice system.

R E F E R E N C E S

A BRAMKIN, V. and G ORDEYEVA , Ye. (2003), Problemy sotialnogo soprovozhdeniya nesovershennoletnikh, akazavshikhsya v mestakh lisheniya svobody . Moscow: ROO Tsentr sodeistviya reformeugolovnogo pravosudiya.

BECK , A. and R OBERTSON , A. (2003), Crime in Russia: Exploring the Link between Victimiza-tion and Concern about Crime, Crime Prevention and Community Safety: an International Journal , 5: 2746.

BOTTOMS , A. and D IGNAN, J. (2004), Youth Justice in Great Britain, in M. Tonry andA. Doob, eds, Youth Crime and Youth Justice , 21184. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

CENTRE FOR LEGAL and J UDICIAL R EFORM (Sudebno-pravovaya reforma ) (2006), available online at www.sprc.ru.

DUNKEL, F. and D RENKHAN, K., eds (2003), Youth Violence: New Patterns and Local Responses .Monchengladbach: Forum Verlag, Godesberg.

ESMEE FAIRBAIRN FOUNDATION (2004), Rethinking Crime and Punishment: The Report . London:Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

ESTRADA , F. (2001), Juvenile Violence as a Social Problem, British Journal of Criminology , 41: 63955.FLIAMER , M., ed. (2000), Pravosudiye po delam nesovershennoletnikh. Mirovaya mozaika i per-

spektivy v Rossii , 2 Vols. Moscow: Penal Reform International.FUND NAN (Nyet alkogolizmu i narkomanii ) (2006), available online at www.nan.ru.GARLAND, D. (2001), The Culture of Control . Oxford: Oxford University Press.GILINSKII, Ya. (2005), Prestupnost nesovershennoletnikh v Rossii, Nevolya , 3: 443.GRAHAM, J. (2002), Juvenile Justice in England and Wales, in N. Bala, J. Hornick, H. Snyder and

J. Paetsch, eds, Juvenile Justice Systems , 67106. Toronto: Toronto Educational Publishing.HOUGH , M. and R OBERTS , J. V. (2004), Youth Crime and Youth Justice . Bristol: The Policy Press.INDEKS/ DOSYE NA TSENZURU (2002), Pitomtsy prizreniya, 17.JUNGER -TAS, J. (2002), The Juvenile Justice System: Past and Present Trends in Western

Society, in I. Weijers and A. Duff, eds, Punishing Juveniles: Principles and Critique , 2344.Oxford, Hart.
http://www.sprc.ru/http://www.nan.ru/http://www.nan.ru/http://www.sprc.ru/


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K RAJEWSKI, K. (2004), Transformation and Crime Control: Towards Exclusive Societies Cen-tral and East European Style, in New Tendencies in Crime and Criminal Policy in Central and Eastern Europe , 65th Proceedings of the International Society for Criminology, 1114March 2003, 1929. Miskolc, Hungary: Bibor publ., Miskolc.

K ULIKOVA , A., ed. (2005), Shag na vstrechu . Krasnoyarsk: Sotsialnyi proyekt.LEVADA CENTER (Levada-Tsentr ) (2005), Death Penalty Data , available online at www.levada.ru/press/2005070501.html.

MAKSUDOV , R. (2001), Vosstanovitelnoye pravosudiye v Rossii . Moscow: MOO Tsentr Sudebnayapravovaya reforma.

MATTINSON , J. and M IRRLEES-BLACK , C. (2000), Attitudes to Crime and Criminal Justice: Findings from the 1998 British Crime Survey , Home Office Research Study, No. 200. London: HomeOffice.

MEHLBYE, J. and W ALGRAVE, L., eds (1998), Confronting Youth in Europe . Copenhagen: AFK.MELOSSI, D. (2000), Translating Social Control: Reflections on the Comparison of Italian

and North American Cultures Concerning Social Control with a Few Consequences of aCritical Criminology, in S. Karstedt and Kai-D. Bussman, eds, Social Dynamics of Crime and Control , 14354. Oxford: Hart.

MOSCOW CENTRE FOR PRISON R EFORM (Tsentr sodeistviya reforme ugolovnogo pravosudiya ) (2006),available online at www.prison.org.

MUNCIE , J. (1999), Youth and Crime . London: Sage.(2004), Youth Justice: Globalization and Multi-model Governance, in T. Newburn

and R. Sparks, eds, Criminal Justice and Political Cultures , 15276. Cullompton: Willan.MVD RF (1996), Prestupnost nesovershennoletnikh v Rossii (19911995) . Moscow: MVD RF.(2002), Prestupnost i pravonarusheniya (19972001) . Moscow: MVD RF.(2004), Prestupnost i pravonarusheniya (19992003) , Moscow: MVD RF.NACRO (2003), A Failure of Justice: Reducing Child Imprisonment . London: NACRO.NEVOLYA (2005), 3. Moscow.TSENTR NEZAVISIMYKH SOTSIOLOGICHESKIKH ISSLEDOVANII (2004), Prestupleniye i nakazaniye nesovershen-

noletnikh pravonarushitelei . St Petersburg: Tsentr nezavisimykh sotsiologicheskikh issledovanii.PRIDEMORE , W. A. (2002), Social Problems and Patterns of Juvenile Delinquency in Transi-

tional Russia, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 39: 187213.R OBERTS , J. V. (2004), Public Opinion and Youth Justice, in M. Tonry and A. Doob, eds,

Youth Crime and Youth Justice , 495542. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.R OBERTS , J. V. and H OUGH , M., eds (2002), Changing Attitudes to Punishment: Public Opinion,

Crime and Justice . Cullompton: Willan.R USSIAN FEDERATION (2005), Third Periodic Report to UN Committee on the Rights of the Child ,

September 2005, available online at www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/crcs40.htm.SNYDER , H. (2002), Juvenile Justice in America, in N. Bala, J. Hornick, H. Snyder and J. Paetsch,

eds, Juvenile Justice Systems , 4366. Toronto: Toronto Educational Publishing.SPROTT , J. (1966), Understanding Public Views of Youth Crime and the Youth Justice Sys-

tem, Canadian Journal of Criminology , 38: 27188.V AN DER LAAN, P. (2004), European Trends and Transatlantic Inspiration: Youth Offending

and Juvenile Justice, in G. Bruinsma, H. Elffers and J. de Keijser, eds, Punishment, Places and Perpetrators , 11337. Cullompton: Willan.

WHITMAN , J. (2003), Harsh Justice . Oxford: Oxford University Press.ZABRYANSKII, G. and Y EMELYANOVA , L. (2000), Statistika prestupnosti nesovershennoletnikh v Rossii v

1998 godu . Moscow: Penal Reform International.
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A P P E N D I X A

Table 2 reports a comparison between the Russian data and the reported British CrimeSurvey (BCS 1998) findings (Table B3.1: Logistic regressionpoorest level of knowl-edge). Though any such exercise involves a series of compromises, the detail in thisparticular instance appears defensible. In both cases, the dependent variable is adichotomy, recording, as detailed in the text, ignorance. The estimation is appropri-ately a logistic regression; we choose to report the odds, rather than the log-odds. Eachn -category categorical predictor (gender, age, education, social class and tenure,income, teenagers) was entered as ( n -1) dummies, thus:

Gender : Straightforward.

Age : For age, the BCS table reports the results with 1624 as the base (referent) category. In our study, theyoungest group of respondents has a lower bound of 18 (not 16), so we re-calculated the BCS results topresent with 2544 (common to both surveys) as the base category. (Notice that we consequently do not report significance tests for the rescaled variable, since individual significance tests are relative to the

particular base category, though the overall BCS variable remains significant.)

Education : There are obvious issues of comparability in regard to education between the two societies.We explored, separately, two contrasts to echo the BCS below A-level category: below incompletehigher (69 per cent of sample) against the rest; and below secondary-specialist (38 per cent of sample)against the rest. Neither generated a significant contrast. We also entered our full education variable,which has eight categories, into the model and tested for its overall significance; it was, given theother variables, not significant (even at the 10 per cent level).

Social class and Tenure : We entered our full 16-category occupation variable (as against the BCS six-category class). Though our variable is perhaps best anglicized to occupation, it has some class char-acteristicsso we could have collapsed it to a rough BCS equivalence. But since BCS also included

housing tenure (which can be seen as providing further subdivisions of occupational class, but whichwe lack), keeping the full divisions of the variable is closer to equivalence between the two instruments.

Income : To match the BCS four categories, we split total household income into four equi-populatedcategories.

Teenagers : Our survey contains no exact equivalent to the BCS question on whether teenagers hangingaround streets is a very big problem. We included an approximate equivalent ( Do you think young people more often commit crimes in a group or individually? ) lest such a measure affect the coefficients of theother variables; but, in the outcome, it made little difference.

In Table 2, the coefficients for the variables other than age, gender and education have not been reported, since, though the aggregate variables match, there is, unsurprisingly, not suffi-cient individual category equivalence to make effect coefficient comparisons interpretable.

A P P E N D I X B

Construction of the welfarepunitive scale The following questions were used to construct the welfarepunitive scale. For eachquestion, each welfare response is coded as 1; each punitive response is coded as +1.All other responses (and dont knows) are scored zero. As indicated in the text, we see


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the coding decisions as adequately transparent in terms of content validity; the most contestable decision is the coding of dont know at the mid-point, but we think, in thiscontext, in which the questions are likely to map to topics on which respondents dohave views, that dont know is plausibly read as neutrality between the offered options.

What, in your view, ought to be the main aims of the justice system in relation to young people? Answering Yes to Punish an offence , Deter the offender and others , and Isolate the offender

from society are deemed to be punitive responses; answering Yes to Re-educate the offender is taken as a welfare response.

If the use of the death penalty had not been abolished in our country, do you think that it ought to be used in the case of a young person who intentionally (not accidentally) has committed a murder?

Answering Yes : punitive; No : welfare.

As is well known, remand centres for young people are often overcrowded. In your view, which of the following would be the most appropriate, in order to reduce the overcrowding?

Answering Under no circumstances place a young person, waiting trial, in a remand centre aswelfare; Only in those cases where s/he presents a danger to society as neutral; and Build more remand centres as punitive.

In your view, ought one to impose such a sentence as detention upon a 15-year-old who has committed a non-violent crime? If you think one should, then what, in your view, ought to be the maximum period of detention for such a teenager?

Answering Detention should not be used as welfare; Three months as neutral; One ,Three , Five or Ten years as punitive.

It is well known that it is not unusual for young people, released from a colony, to commit new crimes. What, in your view, is most often responsible for this?

Agreeing with Because they are born with a disposition to commit crime as punitive; agree-

ing with Because in our society there is no proper system of support for those who are released from places of detention as welfare.

Do you agree that the following measures would contribute to reducing crime among young people? Agreeing with Use other softer types of sentencing as welfare; not agreeing coded as

punitive. Agreeing with Impose harsher sentencing as punitive; disagreeing as welfare.

A P P E N D I X C

R 2 = 0.04. As described in the text, when the basic model seen in the above table is elaborated, by adding furthervariables and freeing the linear form of the incorporated variables, corrected R 2 (taking account of the number of predictors) does not move above 0.04.

OLS regression Unstandardized coefficients p-Value

Dependent: welfare (ve)punitive (+ve) scale B Standard error

(Constant)

1.269 0.301 0.000Education (four-point scale) 0.218 0.072 0.003Victim of crime 0.547 0.282 0.053Age 0.001 0.006 0.820Age2 0.001 0.000 0.026Gender 0.011 0.183 0.951Children over the age of seven 0.079 0.205 0.700Knowledge of youth offences (total) 0.261 0.107 0.015

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