The international context: marginalising the welfare model

The area of crime policy provides an example of the relationship between ideas, discourses and policy. Similar to other policy areas, cultural frameworks shape and modify policy development regarding crime and, thus, socio-legal responses to crime vary from country to country (Nelken, Reference Nelken2006; Melossi, Reference Melossi2000). Societal responses to crime and criminals are further embedded within political ideology and ideas about the role of state institutions in dealing with a variety of social problems (Ajzenstadt, Reference Ajzenstadt2002).

An examination of the history of the response to juvenile delinquency identifies such influences. At the turn of the twentieth century, separate juvenile courts were established in most Western countries, ensuring that young offenders would be treated rather than punished (Junger-Tas and Decker, Reference Junger-Tas and Decker2006). This policy reflected the belief that children who break the law are in need of guidance and help (Cullen and Agnew, Reference Cullen and Agnew2005). This model adopted welfarist principles, favoring an informal approach over formal due process procedures and allowing judges to evaluate juvenile delinquents’ special needs within a therapeutic framework. It was developed within the socio-political structure of the welfare state, adopting its core cultural foundations, such as solidarity, universality and professionalisation (Weijers, Reference Weijers1999). The criminal process and professional intervention were seen as the duty of state institutions aiming to ensure the well-being of young citizens.

Beginning in the 1960s and over the following thirty years, a host of criticisms emerged, challenging the social welfare model and echoing some of the critiques of welfare state foundations. This resulted in dramatically changing juvenile justice policy by adopting managerialism and punitive models (Croall, Reference Croall2006). The criticisms stem primarily from three inter-related sources: firstly, disappointment in the inability of the welfare model to reduce delinquency, despite the financial resources invested in numerous rehabilitation programmes. This was accompanied by calls to encourage the government to develop early, rapid intervention through the penal system rather than through welfare agencies (Muncie, Reference Muncie2008).

Secondly, public perception of increased juvenile involvement in crime was generated by media coverage of violent offences, which represented the juvenile court as too permissive and lenient (Dorfman and Schiraldi, Reference Dorfman and Schiraldi2001; Levesque, Reference Levesque1996). Various groups demanded that harsher punishments be introduced and enforced, and that juveniles should be held responsible for their crimes. They claimed that young offenders should be treated not as immature children, but as adults (Bishop, Reference Bishop, Dünkel and Junger-Tas2009). This was nourished by responsibilisation and individualisation campaigns, which called for individuals – including children – to be held responsible for both the choices they make and the consequences of their actions (Kemshall, Reference Kemshall2008). Thirdly, the children's rights movement challenged the interventionist approach of the welfare model, claiming that it ignored minors’ rights during the criminal justice procedure (Levesque, Reference Levesque1996).

Towards the end of the twentieth century, juvenile justice policies (which were influenced by these ideas) moved the juvenile justice model toward a punitive model. Many countries witnessed a steady erosion of the welfare model and the rise of a new formation of youth crime control culture that translated into penal and surveillance techniques and strategies for dealing with youth crime. Juvenile behaviours were criminalised, and more juvenile offenders were brought under the jurisdiction of the criminal court by the introduction of curfews and intense supervision (Fagan, Reference Fagan1990). Other policies made it easier to transfer serious juvenile offenders to the adult court (Bishop, Reference Bishop, Dünkel and Junger-Tas2009). Juvenile offenders were now awarded due process protection, but – ironically – the new procedures, which initially aimed to ensure children's rights, resulted in the reduction of informal resolution processes, allowing more punitive and retributive sanctions (Feld, Reference Feld1993).

Starting in the USA in the 1980s, the punitive turn influenced the development of penalised juvenile justice in England, Wales and most of the Anglophone liberal welfare regimes (Muncie, Reference Muncie2008). In Italy and the Scandinavian states, on the other hand, the youth justice model advocated penal tolerance, child-centredness and compliance with progressive human rights (Goldson and Hughes, Reference Goldson and Hughes2010). However, in countries with punitive approaches to juvenile justice, there are contradictory or conflicting models. In the USA, for example, while policies of ‘cracking down on’ or ‘getting tough with’ offenders prevail, programmes were initiated that were directed toward prevention and intervention among youth at risk for delinquency (Bishop and Decker, Reference Bishop, Decker, Junger-Tas and Decker2006). England and Wales introduced restorative interventions to help stem youths’ entry into the juvenile justice system (Graham and Moore, Reference Graham, Moore, Junger-Tas and Decker2006). Similarly, in Canada, intervention programmes keeping young people in the community were created (Bala and Roberts, Reference Bala, Roberts, Junger-Tas and Decker2006). Indeed, in many countries, welfare principles did not diminish, nor were they marginalised by those operating the juvenile justice system (Field, Reference Field2007).

These processes took place in the context of the development of the neo-conservatism thread within the New Right ideology. The moral agenda of this epoch advocated a retreat from the universalised coverage of at-risk groups, and the adoption of marketplace rationality as the means for the provision of services (Stoesz, Reference Stoesz1981). The neo-conservative ethos of coercion and punishment linked directly to the disbelief of the neo-liberal governance in state protection and rehabilitation. Furthermore, the introduction of new public managerialism and its drive for effectiveness and economy produced risk-management strategies, and led to the development of a series of cost-effective policies and practices, the concern of which is not individual reform but efficacy (Clarke and Newman, Reference Clarke and Newman1997).

The political ideology of neo-liberalism demands a retreat from the belief that governments should provide social goods, leaving the provision of goods and services to free individuals and to the enterprise of the market (O'Connor and Robinson, Reference O'Connor, Robinson, Van Oorschot, Opielka and Pfau-Effinger2008; Osborne and Gaebler, Reference Osborne and Gaebler1992). Adopting a rational economy philosophy, neo-liberal governance aims to promote individual autonomy, responsibility and freedom, assuming a rational individual to be free to choose among various alternatives (O'Malley, Reference O'Malley1999). The ethos of these ideologies promotes individual responsibility and interprets failure as proof of an individual's weakness (Goldson and Jamieson, Reference Goldson and Jamieson2002). In the area of juvenile justice, this mixture of ideologies decontextualised involvement in crime from the wider social context and associated it, instead, with individual wilful irresponsibility, incorrigibility and family failure (Muncie, Reference Muncie2006).

Following neo-liberal ideas, juvenile justice policies developed risk-management strategies for calculating risk and the probability of re-offending (Kempf-Leonard and Peterson, Reference Kempf-Leonard and Peterson2000). These ideologies were a fruitful ground for the emergence of a response to crime, characterised (among other things) by an ethos of responsibilisation and individualisation. This shifted state responsibility for juvenile delinquency to children and their families (Kemshall, Reference Kemshall2008; Such and Walker, Reference Such and Walker2005).

We will now examine the ways in which these ideas have influenced current juvenile justice policy in Israel.

The Israeli context: welfare state monopoly over juvenile delinquency

Juvenile delinquency was defined as a ‘welfare’ issue in Palestine during the British Mandate (1918–1948). During this period, professionals took it upon themselves to identify, treat and reform juveniles in distress and young delinquents. In 1937, probation officers entered the judicial arena and were authorised to submit a pre-sentence report. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, this welfarist model continued to dominate the juvenile justice system. The 1971 Youth Act (Trial, Punishment and Modes of Treatment) and its accompanying regulations were based on the welfarist youth justice approach, treating juvenile delinquents as victims of drives beyond their ability to control, who thus had to be cared for by the state.

Challenging the welfare model of juvenile justice

Starting in the 1990s, challenges to the dominant welfarist model in the area of juvenile justice emerged in Israel, stemming from four main sources:

(a) The ‘nothing works’ model

As in other countries, concerns were expressed about the lack of success in rehabilitating offenders. Claiming that ‘nothing works’ (Martinson, Reference Martinson1974), members of parliament called for abandoning the unsuccessful welfarist approach and responding severely to children who committed crimes. They put forward numerous suggestions, such as the introduction of minimum penalties, the enactment of curfew laws and an increase in monitoring and surveillance measures in places where young people gather.

(b) Media and public perception

During the last two decades, several waves of moral panic were created after violent acts in which youth were involved either as victims or perpetrators. This moral panic presented children as a threat to public safety. Media reports blamed the lenient approach of the welfare model and, in particular, the light sentences imposed by the juvenile court as enabling violence among children. Moreover, they argued that policies enacted out of consideration for offenders’ rights, such as immunity from publication of a criminal's identity and the automatic provision of a public defender, did not deter juveniles from committing crimes (Pugach, Reference Pugach2010). These claims were accompanied by calls upon the government to ‘get tough’ on crime involving minors.

(c) Children's rights movement

During the 1990s, advocates of children's rights initiated a discourse, claiming that juvenile justice procedures in Israel contradict the principles of due process (Borowski and Ajzenstadt, Reference Borowski and Ajzenstadt2005). In 1997, the Minister of Justice established a committee headed by Judge Saviona Rot-Levi to offer ways of integrating into legislation principles from the United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child, which Israel ratified in 1991. In 2003, the committee submitted a report that included suggestions for amendments to the 1971 Juvenile Law (Trial, Punishment and Modes of Treatment). In 2008, an amendment (no. 14) to the Juvenile Law was passed, which was implemented in July 2009.

(d) Shrinking support for welfare services

Towards the end of the 1980s, Israel gradually moved from a collectivist socio-economic framework to a post-Fordist economy marked by a neo-liberal agenda, minimising the state's role in the market (Shalev, Reference Shalev, Shafir and Peled2000). Support for the welfare state gradually lessened and many health, education and welfare services were privatised (Gal, 1994). This led, among other things, to a severe shortage of employment of social workers and probation officers caring for juvenile delinquents. Indeed, in 2001, the State Comptroller observed that the Child Welfare Authority, which owned institutions for children aged 13–18 defined as being at-risk, had a long waiting-list and, as a result, ‘some of these girls and boys continue to be involved in criminal activity and are at risk of drifting further into the lives of criminals’ (Israel, The State Comptroller, 2001: 97). Seven years later, the State Comptroller reported that ‘the probation services lack 240 professional and 50 administrative positions’ (Israel, The State Comptroller, 2008: 1061). Moreover, the small group of probation officers were required to take on additional assignments in addition to their traditional roles.

Expanding the rehabilitation discourse

The ideological, economic and practical challenges to the welfarist model led to the creation of a new rehabilitative discourse that did not abandon core commitment to the welfarist ethos. The new approach centred on a rehabilitative discourse with an affinity for economic and rights discourses. These discourses, which helped shape the current Israeli juvenile justice system, were embedded with traditional values generated by Israel's child-centred culture.

The core rehabilitative discourse

Narratives utilised by participants in the development of juvenile justice policy continued to see treatment as the primary tool for preventing and responding to youth crime. This rehabilitative narrative echoed the welfare state ideology of solidarity with those who cannot care for themselves. The state continued to be seen as the appropriate agency, responsible for preventing crime, while continuing to be the provider of welfare. The ideology of state responsibility for caring for delinquents was the basis for the establishment of two public committees whose mandate was to design a national programme for reducing child and youth violence: the Vilnai Committee's National Programme for the Reduction of Child and Youth Violence in the Israeli Educational System, 1999, and the inter-ministerial committee, which was authorised to follow the various programmes dealing with child violence (Government of Israel, 2005). Both committees recommended that treatment be defined as a national mission, and that efforts be devoted to find ways to treat juveniles in the best professional manner.

Rehabilitative efforts were seen as a stepping stone for not only ensuring the well-being of children, but also guarding the safety of their families, communities and society in general (Israel, The Labor, Welfare and Health Committee, 7.6.2011). MK Malkior, then the chair of the Knesset Educational Committee, claimed that the ‘enactment of new laws and severe regulations does not solve the problem of juvenile delinquency’ (Meranda, Reference Meranda2007). Instead, he called for an educational response: ‘We need additional funding to enable the Educational Ministry to develop programmes ensuring that children do not drop out of school and do not drift into delinquency’ (Meranda, Reference Meranda2007).

The home, the family and the school were seen as the main social institutions responsible for the provision of care for children. The law and the court were seen as additional important institutions that enable rehabilitation and treatment as defined by the Constitution, Law and Justice Knesset (CLJK) committee chair, Menahem Ben-Sasson: ‘The law is our stepping stone: we'll proceed from here and here we'll return’ (Israel, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, 2007). Similarly, the State Comptroller wrote that the juvenile court should ensure treatment and rehabilitation, especially in the early stages of the criminal procedure (State Comptroller, 2008: 1062).

The rehabilitative approach was further advocated by probation officers who continued to play an important role in the administration of juvenile justice. Utilising a vocabulary of treatment and care notions, officials of the probation services insisted that juvenile delinquency originated in acute welfare needs that must be addressed through professional means: ‘probation officers should be authorised by the government to provide treatment for juvenile delinquents. They have the professional knowledge to identify and treat young people who commit offences’ (interview with the Director of the Juvenile Probation Office, October, 2010). Indeed, probation officers’ duties were expanded to include new roles, such as the submission of detention reports to the courts, in order to allow judges to consider continuing detention or authorising alternative measures.

Rights and welfare

As in other countries, advocates of children's rights in Israel were key players in the processes leading to the creation of new regulations regarding juvenile sentencing, as well as in the administration of juvenile justice. Naturally, the focal point of the discourse reflected their belief that juvenile delinquents’ rights should be strictly protected. Representatives of the Public Defence Office, together with legal practitioners from diverse NGOs, insisted that policies dealing with juvenile delinquents should reflect UNCRC principles with respect to the ‘best interest of the child’. Their claims were immersed in cultural notions connected to the main ideological attributes of the welfare state. Minors brought before the court were represented by the participants in the debates as weak, fragile and in need of state protection both before they committed the offence and during the court proceedings (Israel, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, 13.7.2008). Advocates of children's rights resisted attempts to individualise the causes of crimes committed by minors. They refused to focus on individuals’ contribution to delinquency: ‘Juveniles’ involvement in crime originates in a host of social factors that rest within the state's responsibility and not within the offender's personal character’ (interview with legal counselor, National Council for the Child, August, 2011). Embedding her claims within a rights discourse, Judge Rot-Levi explained that children lack access to basic social rights that the state should guarantee: the right to be loved, to be cared for, to be supported by parents and to be treated and educated. She claimed that this caused them to become involved in criminal activity (Israel, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, 21.11.2007). Children's rights advocates claimed that, due to the cuts made to the welfare system budget, social workers could not identify and treat young children who are at risk of deteriorating into a life of criminality. They represented this neglect as an abuse of children's natural right to grow up in a healthy environment, claiming that all children have the right to access the best treatment.

This approach stands in sharp contrast to the rights discourse that evolved in many Western states, where it was influenced by the neo-liberal notion of responsibilisation: this sees children and their family as responsible for their actions (Kemshall, Reference Kemshall2008; Such and Walker, Reference Such and Walker2005). This shifted the responsibility for juvenile welfare from the state to offenders, legitimising limited state involvement in the provision of solutions for children, and leading to the adulteration of the youth justice system (Hogeveen, Reference Hogeveen2006).

In Israel, the rights discourse has remained independent from the responsibility/justice discourse and has stayed connected to the belief that the state has a responsibility to provide rehabilitation and ensure children's proper development. For example, efforts to hold parents responsible for the crimes of their children were disapproved by the Knesset which resisted attempts to impose harsher penalties on juvenile delinquents. Indeed, the CLJK committee chair, MK Ben-Sasson, explained that the answer to violence should not be the introduction of painful legal measures but instead the development of treatment administrated by the law (Israel, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, 1.4.2008).

Anat Assef, a representative of the Ministry of Justice, claimed that the law should produce a mixture of rights and treatment. Children's rights should create the framework within which treatment would be provided (Israel, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, 21.11.2007). The amendment to the juvenile act reflects the integration of rights and rehabilitation. Article 1A(A), for example, indicates that legal proceedings should be carried out while safeguarding the dignity of the minor and giving due weight to considerations of his/her treatment, care, integration and rehabilitation, as well as his/her age and level of maturity.

The economic discourse

In the USA, England and other countries, discussions about the economic aspects of the juvenile justice system were integrated with arguments about efficiency and cost–benefit issues stemming from the neo-liberal political-economic ideology. These narrow economic discourses legitimised the reduction of rehabilitative programmes (Fergusson, Reference Fergusson2007). In Israel, however, the economic discourse mainly included practical economic concerns and, as with the rights discourse, was strongly linked to welfare ideas and beliefs. Participants in the debates pointed to the importance of dealing with juvenile delinquency, especially at a time of severe economic cuts, insisting that narrow economic considerations should not ignore the traditional ethos of care for children in need.

A few variants of this rhetorical mixture and implications for socio-legal policy can be identified. Some participants claimed that, since Israeli society has a strong moral commitment to needy children, the government is obliged to stop cuts in services that address young delinquents. Framing his claims in a normative discourse, MK Malikor claimed that ‘A Jewish state has a moral responsibility to care for its citizens. This reduction will turn more children into young offenders’ (Israel, Committee for Children's Rights, 18.2.2004). He demanded that the Ministry of Justice hire more juvenile judges in order to give young offenders the best available treatment.

Treatment issues traditionally framed in welfare terms were now narrated through economic terms. The Schmidt report (Reference Schmidt2006), for example, designed a cost-benefit analysis, calculating the profit gained by the prevention of juvenile delinquency. Claiming that the cost of preventing youth delinquency is 10.1 million IS, with a benefit of 20.9 million IS, the author of the report encouraged the state to adopt a national plan for the treatment of juveniles at-risk that was based on cost-benefit assessment.

Using a similar economic narrative, Judge Rot-Levi tried to convince government representatives to adopt restorative justice models when responding to juvenile delinquency. She claimed that this would result in savings in the employment of juvenile judges and prosecutors. Utilising a mixture of economic and welfare arguments, she claimed that society would benefit from the adoption of alternative measures, as they would save taxpayers money which could in turn be diverted to treatment and rehabilitative channels. It would ‘distance children from the courts and from the labelling processes. Our society carries a responsibility to return minors to the normative track . . . This has to be done under the auspices of a rehabilitative agency and with the police and law enforcement agencies’ (Israel, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, 21.11.2007).

The shrinking resources allocated to welfare services led to cuts in the services for treating juvenile delinquents in Israel. Efforts were made to continue to provide as many preventive and rehabilitative services as possible, but reasonable compliance with these cuts in governmental spending led social workers to adjust their services to this narrow, economic framework. In the USA, this approach led professionals dealing with juvenile delinquency to abandon the welfare ethos and to develop an administrative system of case processing (Simon, Reference Simon1990). In contrast, Israeli law enforcement agents continued to adhere to welfare values, trying to incorporate as many treatment and rehabilitative elements as possible into their daily practice. Thus, the president of juvenile judges claimed that, due to the financial cuts, there were not enough juvenile judges. Naturally, they paid less attention to the treatment of children in their courtroom and more to the administration of justice. However, he insisted that they were not neglecting the treatment component and even considered themselves probation officers when such officers were absent from the court (Israel, Committee for Children's Rights, 18.4.2004).

The shortage of probation officers led to a reliance on new agents dealing with juvenile delinquency, mainly NGOs. Private and non-profit agencies started to play an important role in various preventive, assessment and treatment programmes, offering such services as the operation of hostels for juvenile delinquents, treatment of juvenile sexual offenders and offering family conferencing interventions (Israel, The State Comptroller, 2008).

Muncie (Reference Muncie2005) argued that NGOs and private organisations serve the state mode of ‘governing at a distance’ (Rose and Miller, Reference Rose and Miller1992), as services are delivered indirectly by non-state agencies (Ajzenstadt and Rosenhek, Reference Ajzenstadt and Rosenhek2000). In Israel, however, the intervention of NGOs in the area of juvenile justice does not completely relieve the state of its responsibility for youth in conflict with the law. Most programmes are directly financed by the state and are supervised or coordinated by probation officers. The involvement of NGOs as providers of services is perceived by social probation officers as a positive contribution to rehabilitative projects, as indicated by a senior probation officer:

This perspective is not surprising as NGOs in Israel are considered an implementary arm of the state and not its replacement (Almog-Bar and Gidron, Reference Almog-Bar, Gidron, Gidron and Bar2009). NGO operation of these programmes has made it possible to partially overcome the shortage of manpower created by financial cuts. In addition, due to their flexible and dynamic nature, NGOs are able to offer new programmes, focusing on specific groups of populations for whom certain services were not previously accessible. At the same time, it is important to note that, although these programmes are supervised by probation officers, they are not operated by the state. This raises questions regarding the ability and desire of NGO managers to develop long-term programmes within a short-range working environment that depends on ‘soft money’. It also raises concerns about the ways in which profit and economic considerations become linked to their activities (Almog-Bar and Ajzenstadt, Reference Almog-Bar and Ajzenstadt2010).

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, Prof. Michal Almog-Bar, Prof. John Gal and Mr. Efi Braver for their comments on earlier drafts; the editors and anonymous reviewers of for their helpful suggestions in revising the original paper.