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Individual Differences in Public Opinion about Youth Crime and Justice in

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Article in The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice · August 2007

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2311.2007.00481.x

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The Howard Journal Vol 46 No 4. September 2007
ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 338–355

Individual Differences in
Public Opinion about Youth
Crime and Justice in Swansea

KEVIN HAINES and STEPHEN CASE

Kevin Haines is Reader in Criminology and Youth Justice, Department of
Applied Social Sciences,
University of Wales Swansea; Stephen Case is Lecturer in Criminology,
University of Wales Swansea

Abstract: A public opinion survey of youth crime and justice was conducted with a sample
of 496 people in Swansea. Gender and age differences in estimations of youth crime were
compared to official and self-reported youth offending statistics nationally and locally.
Attitudes to sentencing and preventative measures were evaluated with reference to
Swansea’s positive, inclusionary approach to young people. Findings indicate that the
Swansea public overestimates the extent of youth crime locally, yet it remains ambivalent
about appropriate sentencing responses, favouring both punitive and preventative
measures. This suggests that local public opinion is shaped by national media and political
rhetoric, rather than the local realities of youth offending.

Public Opinion of Youth Crime and Justice

. . . the Criminal Justice System is still the public service most distant from what
reasonable people want. (Blair 2006)

The highly emotive issues of crime and criminal justice, particularly the
punishment of offenders, have engaged public and political interest
nationally and internationally for many years (for example, Hough and
Roberts 2004). Indeed, modern politicians ascribe increasing importance
to the concordance between public opinion and the level of public
confidence in the administration of justice (see Tonry and Doob 2004).
However, major measures of public opinion, such as the British Crime
Survey (BCS) have not focused specifically on juvenile crime. Crime
surveys have tended to ask the public about crime in general or, where
specific questions are posed, they relate to crimes committed by adults.
Consequently, public opinion relating to youth crime and youth justice is
relatively under-researched, despite these inextricably-linked issues pos-
ing major concerns to the general public throughout the western world

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 The Howard Journal Vol 46 No 4. September 2007
ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 338–355

(see Roberts 2004; Tonry and Doob 2004). Notable exceptions in engaging
with these issues are the 1998 BCS (see Mattinson and Mirrlees-Black
2000) and the 2003 Office for National Statistics Omnibus Survey (Hough
and Roberts 2004), in which specific questions about juvenile crime were
included. The main conclusions were that adults (children or young people
were not asked to complete either survey) generally:

 overestimated the proportion of overall crime committed by young

people
 estimated that youth crime was increasing
 believed that the courts were too lenient in the sentencing of young
offenders.

Some commentators, such as Green (2006), are highly critical of the

validity and representativeness of public opinion surveys, arguing that they
precipitate uninformed, top-of-the-head responses. Instead, they advocate
the ‘deliberative poll’ (see also, Sturgis, Roberts and Allum 2005), a two-
way dialogue between the public and policy makers as equal partners, with
the purpose of making binding decisions underpinned by informed public
judgment (in contrast to one-way, expert-led public education pro-
grammes). However, the suggested widespread usage of deliberative polls
as an integral component of youth justice policy development has been
dismissed by some as ‘unrealistically utopian’ (see Green 2006). At the very
least, the recommendation could be criticised on the grounds of political,
financial and resource pragmatism; for instance, it may be unpopular with
local politicians (for fear of what results the process may yield) and it is
likely to be expensive and time consuming compared to a survey. There is
also no explicit, demonstrated public support for deliberative polls
nationally or locally, which could, if it existed, go some way to justifying
their use in the light of the aforementioned limitations.
Emerging research findings from public opinion surveys about juvenile
crime appear, in their most general form, to reflect public opinion about
adult crime. The way in which people who have offended are sentenced by
the courts is shown, by the limited amount of existing public opinion
research, to be a matter of considerable concern and, furthermore, a
matter about which the public is quite misinformed. At the heart of issues
about sentencing there exists a major conundrum: on the one hand there
are findings showing the public to be generally quite punitive in their
attitudes towards the sentencing of offenders (which is usually taken to mean
support for imprisonment), and at the same time there is public support
for community-based sentences and rehabilitative measures. This paradox
is exacerbated by the lack of faith amongst sentencers and practitioners in
the efficacy of imprisonment, juxtaposed with its continued widespread
use in the belief that the public is less tolerant of more constructive
responses such as community sentences (see Hough and Roberts 2004).
The findings discussed have serious implications. If, on the one hand,
the public underestimates the severity of sentencing and overestimates the
severity of offending, then two misconceptions are compounded to build a

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grossly inaccurate picture of crime and sentencing that, almost inevitably,

leads to poor levels of public confidence in the criminal justice system. It is,
thus, extremely important to capture accurately what the public think it
knows about the nature of juvenile crime and the way in which juvenile
offenders are sentenced by the courts. Research could also usefully explore
public opinion about the way young people should be treated by the courts.
Extant findings show some consistency in public opinion about adult
and juvenile crime internationally (for example, Tonry and Doob 2004)
and in England and Wales (for example, Roberts and Hough 2005;
Mattinson and Mirrlees-Black 2000). These studies also add important
additional information to our direct knowledge about public opinion and
juvenile crime.
The latter studies are, however, based on nationally representative
samples of the general public in England and Wales and tend to ‘view public
opinion in an undifferentiated way’ (Hancock 2004, p.51). As a result, they
may not fully reflect specific national (Welsh) or regional factors and may
‘wash out’ potentially important local and individual (age, gender)
differences that may be important for our understanding of public opinion
of youth crime. It is becoming increasingly recognised that the experience of
crime, including youth crime, is a highly localised and individualised
phenomenon. Crime patterns, and for that matter fear of crime, are not
uniform or constant across countries, urban or rural areas, inner cities and
suburbs. It is well-understood that, for example, fear of crime has a
disproportionate impact on the elderly, whilst young people are more likely
to experience crime as victims. There is value in further quantifying and
qualifying these experiences in order to understand the phenomenon and
plan responses to it. Therefore, national population surveys may be of
limited use in understanding what different subgroups of the general public
in specific local areas think about juvenile crime and how best to deal with
young people who have offended. This study highlights the (added) value
and importance of using local surveys to generate locally specific information
relevant to different characteristics of the population (for example, gender,
age, victim status), to avoid washing away individual differences in public
opinion. Moreover, this more sensitive analysis can be placed in the context
of hard data about the nature, prevalence and frequency of local juvenile
crime patterns, thus yielding a more sophisticated analysis of the relationship
between crime and public opinion, and to better inform local provision.
As we will show, Swansea has, for ten years now, adopted a distinctive
approach to young people who have offended, based on a children’s rights
perspective, that has had a major impact upon reducing levels of official
and self-reported youth crime locally (Swansea Youth Offending Team
2005; Case 2004). The implications of this approach for public opinion
about juvenile crime are at the heart of this enquiry.

The Welsh Context: Welsh Assembly Government Policy

The Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) and the Youth Justice Board for
England and Wales (YJB) have jointly published an All Wales Youth

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Offending Strategy, which promotes a prevention-focused, socially-inclusive,

rights-based approach to young people who have offended (Welsh
Assembly Government and Youth Justice Board 2004). The Strategy
coalesces with Extending Entitlement: Support for 11 to 25 Year Olds in Wales.
Direction and Guidance, which emphasises universal entitlement to support
services and guidance for all young people in Wales, including young
offenders (National Assembly Policy Unit 2002; see also, Case, Clutton and
Haines 2005). This shared foundation for multi-agency work with young
people in Wales is underpinned by the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child (UNICEF 1999), prioritising the positive treatment of young
offenders as children first and offenders second (Welsh Assembly Govern-
ment and Youth Justice Board 2004; Cross, Evans and Minkes 2002).
It must be noted, however, that the All Wales Youth Offending Strategy
(AWYOS) is relatively new. Targets and objectives for the implementation
of the AWYOS by local youth offending teams have only recently been
published by the WAG. There exist little information or hard data, as yet,
on the implementation of the AWYOS and any systematic independent
evaluation is some way off. However, the local, Swansea-based initiative
‘Promoting Prevention’ (reported below) embodies the same ‘children
first’ principles and has been in place for ten years.

The Swansea Context: Promoting Prevention

In line with the positive, rights-based ethos for work with young people in
Wales, Swansea’s strategy towards young people who have offended is
known as Promoting Prevention (Case 2004). Promoting Prevention is a
cross-cutting multi-agency partnership involving the statutory and
voluntary sectors, with the central aim of preventing offending amongst
10- to 17-year-olds. Promoting Prevention is based on the principles of
educational and economic inclusion, and seeks to implement the main
objective of the ‘Safer Swansea’ Crime and Disorder Reduction Plan;
namely the prevention of offending and reoffending by young offenders
(in line with the Crime and Disorder Act 1998).
Promoting Prevention is driven by the principles of consultation and
empowerment that have underpinned the local authority’s approach to
service provision for young people since the inception of the Promoting
Positive Behaviour initiative in 1996 (Haines and Case 2003), and the first
annual Swansea Youth Conference held in 1999. Therefore, the City and
County of Swansea had established a youth inclusion and enfranchisement
agenda prior to the WAG’s articulation of this ethos in its recent policy
statements (National Assembly Policy Unit 2002; see also, Haines, Case and
Portwood 2004).
There is widespread support for and engagement in Promoting
Prevention across the authority, from members to officers to the various
participant departments and other organisations such as schools and the
police – reflected in an increasing breadth and scope of multi-agency
working, the development of local funding streams to subsidise practi-
tioners for the Promoting Prevention initiative, and annual decreases in

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(official and self-reported) youth offending (Case 2004; National Assembly

Policy Unit 2002). To-date, however, the wider population of the city and
county of Swansea has not had a systematic opportunity to express its views
about young people and crime. Furthermore, in developing Promoting
Prevention and in targeting its range of responses to youth crime, the
authority does not yet have the full benefit of knowing:

 what the wider Swansea population thinks about youth crime;

 whether the views held are accurate or misrepresent reality;
 what the general public believes are the main causes of juvenile crime.
It is particularly important as a means of building a cohesive local strategy
to address youth crime, that the Promoting Prevention partnership
develops a comprehensive understanding of any similarities and disparities
between their positive conception of young people, youth crime and
justice, and that of the Swansea public. For instance:

 Does the public support the positive principles of Promoting Prevention?

 Has public opinion been influenced by the local approach to youth
crime and justice?
 Are there any individual differences in public opinion between certain
demographic groups in the population?

Therefore, the case for local public opinion studies, generally, is made on
the basis that there are limitations of national surveys and distinct gains in
type, quality and utility of information obtainable through local surveys.
This is not in any way an attempt to claim that Swansea is either atypical or
representative as a city or in terms of its youth offending profile and local
responses (both official and public) to this, but rather that there is inherent
value in conducting local surveys, and developing a greater locally specific
understanding of the public’s views of youth crime as a means of informing
policy and practice.
Consequently, a public opinion survey was conducted, with the main
objective of evaluating the Swansea public’s perceptions of youth crime and
justice in relation to the positive, rights-based ethos that underpins work
with young offenders at the local and national (Welsh) level, and the
resulting patterns of youth crime locally.

Methodology
A questionnaire was chosen, as it is the most appropriate method of
surveying the opinions and attitudes of a large population of people (in this
case, the Swansea general public). Questionnaire content was underpinned
by previous public opinion research in the general arena of criminal
justice, and adapted to focus on youth justice concerns (see also, Roberts
and Hough 2005). Questions elicited demographic information and public
opinion data concerning knowledge of, and attitudes to, youth crime and
justice (particularly sentencing), as the former informs understanding of
the latter (see Hough and Roberts 2004). Questions assessed:

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Demographic Information

 Gender, age group, victim status (yes/no)

Estimations of Youth Crime and Justice

 Has youth crime increased?

 What proportion of youth crimes involve violence/theft?
 What proportion of violent crimes/thefts receive a custodial sentence?

Attitudes to Youth Crime and Justice

 Are court sentences too lenient/tough?

 What is the most appropriate form of sentencing for young people
(just deserts versus differential sentencing)?
 What is/should be the main purpose of sentencing?
 Should young people be sentenced differently to adults?
 Do magistrates sentence young people differently to adults?
 What is the best way to prevent youth crime?
Although the questionnaire utilised dichotomous (yes/no) and tick-box list
response options, the predominant format was Likert scale. This form of
response scale was employed as a more sophisticated and sensitive method
of measuring the complexities inherent in public opinion, enabling the
questionnaire to address more effectively the range and depth of local
public opinion (Hancock 2004).
Questionnaires were administered to an opportunity sample of 500
people aged between 18 and 64 years across Swansea, with 496 legible
questionnaires returned. Respondents were given the instruction to think
about youth offending in Swansea, rather than Wales or the UK when
answering, although the questionnaire itself was deliberately intended as a
generic instrument that could be replicated in other areas.

Analysis of Findings
Basic descriptive percentages were obtained from the data and broken
down by gender (male/female), age group (younger 5 18 to 34 years,
middle 5 35 to 49 years, older 5 50 years and over) and victim status (72%
of respondents reported that they had ever been a victim of crime).
Subgroup differences were investigated using chi-squared (for dichot-
omous yes/no responses) and independent t-test (for interval level data in
Likert-scale format). Any statistically-identified individual differences in
levels of public opinion are identified and discussed.
The analysis aims to make a valuable contribution to this growing, yet
still relatively neglected area of interest in public opinion research by
adding the following foci to extant methodologies and analyses:

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Local and national (Welsh) specificity – analysis of the public opinion of a

Swansea-based sample and a discussion of emergent issues in bi-national
(England and Wales), national (Wales) and local (Swansea) contexts.

Comparison with self-reported offending statistics – public opinion will be

evaluated in the light of available self-reported youth offending data (in
addition to official statistics) in order to address the established limitations
of official figures (for example, failure to measure the ‘dark figure’ of
unreported, unrecorded and undetected youth crime).

Individual differences – consideration of any gender and age differences in

public opinion to youth crime and justice, supplemented by exploration of
any differences between the opinions of victims of crime compared to non-
victims.

Results: Estimations of Youth Crime and Justice

As indicated in the methodology, this thematic area of the questionnaire
focused upon the public’s estimations of the extent and nature of both
youth crime and sentencing activity.

Key finding: The Swansea public, particularly older people, incorrectly

overestimated an increase in youth crime
The majority of the general public in Swansea (60%) estimated that youth
crime had increased in the past two years, with older people being
significantly more likely to assert this than younger- or middle-age group
respondents ( po0.01). However, available official statistics for England
and Wales suggest a 0.003% decrease from 2003/04 to 2004/05 (Youth
Justice Board 2006), with the same source indicating that officially-
recorded youth crime in Wales decreased by 2% from 2002/03 to 2003/04
(Youth Justice Board 2005). Also, from 2002/03 to 2004/05, official youth
crime in Swansea decreased by 26%, the number of recorded young
offenders decreased by 3% and the number of persistent young offenders
(that is, those sentenced on three or more separate occasions that year)
decreased by 45% (Swansea Youth Offending Team 2005).
The Offending, Crime and Justice Survey identified the 10- to 17-year-
old and 18- to 25-year-old age groups as containing the highest
percentages of self-reported offending amongst a sample of 10- to 65-
year-olds in England and Wales (Budd, Sharp and Mayhew 2005), at least
partially vindicating the Swansea general public’s estimations of offending.
However, the annual MORI Youth Survey of self-reported youth crime
(commissioned by the YJB) indicates that levels of youth crime in England
and Wales have remained unchanged from 2002 to 2004 (see MORI 2004),
whilst youth crime in Wales specifically has decreased by 9%. The recent local
evaluation of Promoting Prevention also suggested that self-reported
youth crime had decreased by 2% over the same period (Case 2004).
Comparisons with self-reported youth offending levels are especially
pertinent to this study because officially-recorded crime statistics do not

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offer a fully comprehensive, valid portrayal of the extent and nature of

(youth) crime1 (see, for example, Tarling 1993) as one might expect it to be
experienced by local people. Official statistics are employed as a tacitly-
accepted, valid comparator for public estimates in many recent public
opinion studies (for example, Roberts and Hough 2005). Notably, official
statistics (typically recorded by youth offending teams and the police)
neglect the infamous ‘dark figure’ of unreported, unrecorded and
undetected crime. In contrast, self-report measures, although not perfect
due to, inter alia, the potential for participant reactivity, are considered by
proponents to be a more reliable, valid and robust measure of youth
offending (for example, Farrington 2003). To compound the confusion
over the validity and applicability of different statistical sources, there are
also differences in scope (that is, national versus local) between studies
using each method. When varying ‘official’ sources are further contrasted
with national self-reported offending studies (for example, the Home
Office’s ‘Offending, Crime and Justice Survey’, which focuses on prisoners
and young people on community penalties – Budd, Sharp and Mayhew
(2005)), and the YJB’s annual MORI Youth Survey (secondary school
pupils and young people excluded from school), and local self-report
studies (for example, the international, but area-based, International Self-
reported Delinquency Survey – Junger-Tas, Marshall and Ribeaud (2004)),
it would not be surprising if public opinion was affected by confusion over
which sources provide accurate measures of youth crime.
Therefore, there is information in the public domain that supports the
view of the Swansea public, although, as might be expected, the public does
not have an accurate overview of the extent and nature of official and self-
reported juvenile crime rates, particularly regarding youth crime in their
locality. A finding such as this raises further questions about the role of
mediators of public opinion (for example, media, government rhetoric),
which we address later.

Key finding: The Swansea public, particularly females, younger people

and victims of crime, overestimated the proportion of youth crimes that
are violent or theft-related
The mean estimates for the proportion of overall crime made up of violent
offences (38%) and theft (55%) greatly overestimate levels of officially –
recorded violent and theft-related crime in England and Wales (16%
violent; 18% theft – Youth Justice Board (2006)), Wales alone (14% violent;
17% theft – Youth Justice Board (2005)) and Swansea (10% violent; 17%
theft – Swansea Youth Offending Team (2005)). However, official statistics
do demonstrate increases in the past year in violent crime (11%) and theft
(5%) by young people in England and Wales (Youth Justice Board 2006),
which may have contributed to the Swansea public’s overestimations of the
extent and nature of these crimes. Available self-report statistics for Wales
suggest that, if the Swansea public had been considering Wales as a whole,
violent crime (32%) and theft (25%) would still have been overestimated,
but not as dramatically as official statistics suggest (Haines, Case and
Portwood 2004). However, as discussed previously, the multiplicity of

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contrasting sources of data relating to youth crime and justice that are
available (for example, national/local, official/self-report) render it difficult
to evaluate coherently public opinion in Swansea in an appropriate
context.
A large minority of respondents (43%) reported that they had ever been
a victim of theft and 21% had been victims of violence, so this level of
personal experience of crime, particularly if it was experienced locally, may
go some way to explaining why the public appears to overestimate crime in
relation to official statistics. This conclusion is supported by the finding that
victims expressed significantly higher estimations of violent and theft-
related crimes compared to non-victims ( po0.05). However, it must be
stressed that the members of the sample were not specifically asked
whether they had ever been victims of crime by young people (a judgment
which it could, in reality, be difficult to make in certain situations) and there
may have been some confusion/contamination of results relating to
whether they were victimised locally (for example, they may have forgotten
the original instruction to only consider crime in Swansea). Future research
could, however, usefully explore these issues in more detail.
The overestimations of violence2 and theft-related youth crime by
younger respondents in this study (compared to older respondents,
po0.05) could be associated with that group’s increased likelihood of
falling victim to these types of crime (Nicholas et al. 2005) and the
possibility of an associated fear of victimisation, although the latter was not
measured in this survey nor by the British Crime Survey (in terms of
individual differences). For example, younger people surveyed were more
likely than any other age group to report being victims of violence. This
finding indicates that younger people would be an appropriate target
group for the systematic dissemination of information relating to youth
crime at a local level. However, the finding (reported below) that younger
people are significantly less likely than older respondents to place faith in
the veracity of media reporting of crime suggests that they may be
particularly difficult to convince through this medium alone.
The potential for fear of crime to influence perceptions of youth crime is
raised by the overestimations of violent crime and theft levels by females
(compared to males, po0.05) in Swansea. These overestimations correlate
with the increased levels of fear of all types of crime expressed by females,
particularly younger females, in the 2002 British Crime Survey (Chivite-
Matthews and Maggs 2002), but conflict with their reports of lower
victimisation rates than males in general and for violent and theft-related
crimes specifically. It will be useful in future research to address directly the
public’s fear of youth crime, which is hypothesised to be exponentially
increasing by a burgeoning body of critical criminological literature (see
Muncie 2004).
Overestimations of youth crime may be a corollary of the Swansea
public’s belief that the mass media provides an accurate and balanced
portrayal of juvenile crime. This belief was significantly more likely to be
found in both older people and middle-age group respondents compared
to younger people ( po0.001 and po0.01 respectively) and females

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compared to males (po0.05). Additionally, extant public opinion research

indicates, some have argued, that the mass media is responsible for
simultaneously informing and distorting the public’s perception of crime
in general (for example, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation 2004) and youth
crime and justice specifically (see Schwartz 1992), typically through the
exaggeration of the proportion of violent crime committed by young
people and presentation of the criminal justice system as overly-lenient (see
Jewkes 2004), or by simply not presenting the full picture. As Dorfman and
Shiraldi (2001) have suggested, it appears that a small minority of young
people are arrested each year for violent crimes, yet the media indicate that
this is a common occurrence. Media distortion of public opinion can
promote ‘stereotyping, bias, prejudice and a gross over-simplification of
the facts’ ( Jewkes 2004, p.67). Such distortion can serve to increase public
anxiety/fear of crime by exaggerating the individual’s probability and
severity of danger (Reiner 2002) and can increase the punitiveness of
public opinion (Gillespie and McLaughlin 2002), although Jewkes (2004)
cautions that we should ensure against over-generalising about the effects
of the media.

Results: Attitudes to Youth Crime and Sentencing

This subsection of the questionnaire addressed the public’s view of
appropriate principles for sentencing young people, their opinions as to
whether these principles are applied by the courts, and their beliefs as to
the most effective preventative measures in the youth offending area.

Key finding: The Swansea public simultaneously favoured punitive

sentences and constructive sentences for young offenders
The most popular main aim of sentencing for the Swansea general public
(with no gender or age differences) was punishment (39%), as opposed to
deterrence, incapacitation or compensation (see Figure 1). Accordingly, the
majority of the public asserted that the courts are either lenient or too
lenient when dealing with young offenders (79% of the sample), indicating
a basic or fundamental punitive attitude amongst the public in Swansea.
The Swansea public estimated that 24% of young people committing a
violent offence are imprisoned, compared to 17% of young people
committing theft (see Figure 2). Although YJB statistics do not specifically
indicate the proportions of violent offenders and young people committing
theft who receive custody, they do suggest that the Swansea public greatly
overestimates the national custody levels for young people in England and
Wales (3.8% of all offences) and Wales alone (3.9% of all offences) (Youth
Justice Board 2004). Local figures (Swansea Youth Offending Team 2005)
also indicate that the general public greatly overestimates the proportion of
offenders who actually receive custody for both violence (2% compared to
the public’s estimate of 24%) and theft (1% compared to the public’s
estimate of 17%). This suggests a glaring disparity between public
aspirations for sentencing and the government’s commitment to diver-
sionary approaches to sentencing for young people, as espoused within the

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Other aims
Ideal aim

Compensation to victim Actual aim

Individual deterrence

General deterrence

Protect public by incapacitation

Reintegration/rehab

Punishment

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
% agreement

FIGURE 1
What is the (Actual) Aim and What Should be the (Ideal) Aim of Sentencing for Magistrates

% of theft offenders who should be imprisoned

% of theft offenders imprisoned

% of total crime theft

% of violent offenders who should be imprisoned

% of violent offenders imprisoned

% of total crime violent

0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Estimated %

FIGURE 2
Public Opinion of Violence and Theft

Crime and Disorder Act (Home Office 1998) and local as well as national
sentencing practice.
The public’s apparently punitive attitude to youth justice is further
reinforced by their opinions of the proportion of young people committing
violence and theft who should be imprisoned. Despite their initial
overestimations of youth imprisonment levels for violence (24%) and theft
(17%), the Swansea public asserted that it would like to see more than
double those proportions of violent youth offenders (59%) and those
committing theft (40%) sent to prison (see Figure 2).
Of course, these attitudes need to be placed in the context of the public’s
estimations of the seriousness of offences committed by juveniles. If the
public has in mind more serious manifestations of particular crime types

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% agreement

FIGURE 3
Most Effective Measure in Preventing Youth Crime

than is typical, particularly if this is set in the general context of a hyped up

(but misplaced or at least inaccurate) concern with offending by juveniles,
then one might expect a more punitive attitude. The overall situation is,
however, far from clear. Set against the above, the majority of this same,
apparently punitive, general public expressed a strong preference for:
 sentencing young people differently (that is, more leniently) to adults;
 individualised sentencing over a simple just deserts/proportionality
model as the most appropriate sentencing principle for young people;
 community sentences for young people over custody, particularly when
offered more detail about the offender and the circumstances
surrounding the offence (cf. Roberts and Hough 2005);
 improved family discipline and more leisure opportunities (ostensibly
pro-social, preventative measures) over custody and increased sentence
severity as the best way to prevent youth crime (see Figure 3).
Findings suggest a general public in Swansea ambivalent to youth crime
and justice (cf. Cullen et al.’s (2002) similar findings relating to adult crime),
with this ambivalence particularly reflected in their simultaneous (and
contradictory) support for punitive sentencing, community sentencing
rather than custody, and preventative measures over increased sentencing
severity. So, how do we reconcile the strength of differences in the public
opinion discussed above?
Closer analysis indicates that respondent age may impact upon opinion
of youth crime and justice; highlighting an age-related divide between
support for punishment-based (older people) and treatment-based
(younger people) approaches to sentencing. For example, older people
were significantly more likely than younger people to believe that existing
sentencing of young people is too lenient (po0.05) and that punishment
should be the ideal aim of sentencing (po0.05). In contrast to older
people, younger people were significantly more likely to support
individualised sentencing and rehabilitation/reintegration as the ideal
aim of sentencing (both po0.05). In relation to prevention, older people

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were significantly more likely to favour improved family discipline

( po0.01); whilst younger people preferred increased leisure opportu-
nities ( po0.01).
The clearly-identified age gap in sentencing and prevention prefer-
ences could be attributable to generational/cultural differences. Most of the
older age group (50 years and over) would have lived their teenage years in
the 1950s and 1960s; predating the regular production of youth crime
statistics, the increasingly insidious influence of the mass media on public
opinion and the strategic use of government responses to youth crime and
justice as political vote winners (see Muncie 2004). Indeed, the 1960s
witnessed a collapse of faith in rehabilitative approaches and increase in
support for minimal intervention (‘progressive minimalism’) in the lives of
young offenders, as opposed to the plethora of invasive, interventionist
government responses seen today (see Hughes, McLaughlin and Muncie
2002). In stark contrast, today’s young people arguably exist in a media-
and government-created goldfish bowl, within which they are regularly
portrayed as ‘folk devils’ and often fall victim to ‘moral panics’ about out-of-
control youth, not to mention being the demographic group most likely to
be victims of crime. Generational differences may also impact upon public
opinion in terms of personal relevance, in that older people, by dint of their
age, are most likely to have been affected at some point in their lives by
youth crime, either as victims or parents of victims. In addition, some older
respondents within the sample may be too old to have children who fall
within the remit of the youth justice system (YJS), so they may lack a degree
of familiarity or empathy with the lives of young people. In this respect,
attitudes to young offenders reflecting ‘populist punitiveness’ may be more
understandable. In contrast, younger people would appear to have more
of a personal ‘stake’ in the development of youth justice (‘child-friendly’,
pro-social, inclusionary) approaches that may benefit them personally (as
offenders or victims), as well as benefiting their peers and future
generations, including their own children.
Younger respondents expressed preference for preventative measures
is in line with the official aim of the YJS and the main priority of the Safer
Swansea Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership, namely to prevent
youth offending, rather than to punish or treat it per se. The Swansea public
in general puts most faith in improving discipline within the family as the
measure most likely to prevent young people from offending (see Figure 3).
This correlates with the finding from the MORI Youth Survey that
worrying about parental reaction was the biggest deterrent against
offending reported by young people (MORI 2004). The public also
tended to favour increasing positive leisure time activities for young people
as a crime prevention measure. Improving discipline within the school was
the third most favoured measure. Interestingly, these measures can be
viewed as either positive responses towards young people designed to
promote desirable behaviour (increased leisure activities) or at the very
least, proactive, normalising measures rather than punitive, blaming
responses to young people who commit crime. In this sense, public
attitudes in Swansea accord with the All Wales Youth Offending Strategy’s

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view of young people as children first and offenders second, which is

mirrored in local youth policy and practice (see Case 2004).
It would seem pertinent at this stage to raise the issue of whether the
pro-social approaches favoured by the Swansea general public are, in
reality, being targeted upon and received by those young people most in
need of them (for example, persistent and serious young offenders). There
is an argument to be made that preventative approaches, which by their
very nature are more long term and harder to evidence in terms of impact
(see Williamson 2005), are more likely to be implemented in a facile
manner with more amenable groups, such as ‘at risk’ young people and
first-time offenders. Consequently, the degree to which public sentiment
reflects the full reality of preventative practice locally is moot. These
tensions are evident in the Safer Swansea Partnership, as its bespoke
initiative to address youth crime prevention, ‘Promoting Prevention’,
offers predominantly school- and leisure-based provision, so local practice
and public opinion would seem to coalesce around this issue. However,
Promoting Prevention provides no specific interventions targeting the
family, thus public opinion illuminates a shortfall in provision that was first
identified in a recent independent evaluation of the initiative (see Case
2004).

Conclusion
Through the policies of the Welsh Assembly Government, a positive
approach to young people has been articulated in Wales, one which
emphasises universal access to entitlements and views of young offenders
as children first and offenders second (see, for example, Welsh Assembly
Government and Youth Justice Board 2004). This research has attempted,
for the first time, to begin the process of mapping these views onto the
public’s understandings and beliefs about juvenile crime in Swansea.
Whilst at a general level, our findings concord with those of national
studies in England and Wales (for example, Hough and Roberts 2004),
closer analysis reveals a number of additional individualised and localised
factors, most notably:

 Although the Swansea public as a whole overestimates and misjudges

the extent and nature of youth crime, there are also interesting age and
gender differences evident. For example, older people are more likely
than other age groups to believe that youth crime has increased, whilst
females and younger people (compared to males and other age groups
respectively) are more likely to overestimate the extent of violent and
theft-related crime committed by young people. The emergence of
these individual differences in public opinion requires closer investiga-
tion in further local studies.
 To some extent, public opinion in Swansea appears to have been
influenced by positive local approaches to youth crime and justice (for
example, Promoting Prevention), as evidenced by the public’s support
for preventative measures and individualised, differential sentencing

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for young people. However, the positive conception of young people

promoted locally is not reflected in public support for punitive,
custodial measures and belief that court sentences are too lenient.
 Findings suggest that local approaches to youth crime and justice
should focus their dissemination strategies on, inter alia, educating the
Swansea public as to the effectiveness of alternatives to custody for
young people and the availability and impact of preventative and
community measures locally, in addition to working with local
politicians and media to promote a more realistic view of the extent
and nature of youth crime in Swansea.

Therefore, the Swansea findings mirror, but do not match the findings
of Hough and Roberts (2004), as this study provides additional informa-
tion about individual differences in public opinion and how far local
opinion reflects the realities of youth crime and sentencing locally and
nationally.
The ambivalent Swansea findings imply that the government would be
misguided if it were influenced by public opinion to the extent of
employing the notion of an ‘unqualifiedly punitive public to justify punitive
policies’ (Green 2006, p.132; see also, Hough and Roberts 2004). The
potential for the government to extrapolate policy direction from invalid
findings reinforces Allen’s (2003) identification of a ‘comedy of errors’ in
the relationship between public opinion and policy/practice, where neither
is based on a proper understanding of the other. In particular, national
surveys using statistically-representative samples may ‘wash away’ any
sensitivity to individual or local differences (cf. Gibbs and Haldenby 2006)
in their quest for generalisable findings that can inform policy and practice
at the national level. This limitation presents a cogent argument for locally-
specific studies of public opinion, which can produce richer data that more
sensitively and validly reflect the local context of public opinion, and can
inform localised approaches to youth crime and justice.
It would be misguided to suggest that our results offer a simplified and
unequivocal reading of public opinion in Swansea as responses could have
been affected by a number of extraneous factors, including lack of offence
information, lack of specificity of offence category (for example, ‘violence’),
time constraints when completing the questionnaire, and the public’s pre-
existing ideological positions (see Hancock 2004). Further local surveys
(with more time and resources) may wish to consider controlling for these
variables through, inter alia, the use of deliberative polls, qualitative
interviews to explore questionnaire responses, provision of more detailed
offence information (for example, vignettes, offender background) and
filter questions gauging the extent to which respondents have thought
about the topic (see Hancock 2004). However, our results are able to
demonstrate quantitatively the extent to which the Swansea public is either
misinformed or holds inaccurate, exaggerated views about juvenile crime
in the locality. These views make more sense when placed in the national
(media and political) context than when the realities of the local situation
are explained. The Swansea public may be receiving information on youth

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crime and justice that relates almost entirely to England and Wales through
media portrayals and political rhetoric. This paradoxically generic, yet
partial, picture cannot capture the complexity or context-specificity of the
phenomenon. Consequently, national mediators of public opinion such as
media and political rhetoric appear to be impacting upon the Swansea
public by distorting public debate and the public’s reactions to youth crime
and justice, thus undermining, to some extent, the local approach to the
management of youth crime and justice.

Notes
1 For instance, recent statistics for crime recorded by the police estimated that 5.9 million
offences were committed in 2003/04, whilst the British Crime Survey estimated 11.7
million offences, nearly double this figure (Dodd et al. 2004).
2 The accuracy, validity and sensitivity of responses relating to ‘violence’ could have been
affected by the term being presented as a generic offence category rather than being
unpacked, so that different forms of violence could be assessed (for example, assault,
personal robbery, commercial robbery – Budd, Sharp and Mayhew (2005)).

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Date submitted: June 2006

Date accepted: December 2006

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