Youth Justice in Israel

Youth justice policy in Israel is a problem-solving, individual-treatment, adopting welfare model. While in many Western countries juvenile justice has moved from a welfare approach to a punitive model, policies in Israel have modified and changed: They retain the traditional view that juvenile delinquents are to be treated and rehabilitated rather than punished. In order to understand the reasons for this approach, we need to see the cultural and social construct embedded within the Israeli model and follow the local and global processes influencing the development of the sociolegal response to juvenile delinquency in Israel over time (see discussion in Ajzenstadt and Khoury-Kassabri 2013). This essay starts with a review of the organization and operation of the juvenile delinquency system in Israel. It further locates policy changes taking place in Israel within a wider sociopolitical context, specifying three phases of policy development.

The sociolegal response to juvenile delinquency in Israel derives from the 1971 Youth Act (trial, punishment, and modes of treatment) with its accompanying regulations. The age of criminal responsibility in Israel spans the years 12 to 18. Young offenders at these ages are dealt with by a juvenile justice system that includes a special youth department of the police, a juvenile probation service, a youth protection authority, a juvenile court, and a juvenile prison. The ideology shaping the modus operandi of these institutions is individual treatment and rehabilitation, with as much flexibility and informality as possible (see Jonathan et al. 2010).

Juvenile offender officers working in special police units are responsible for the investigation of juvenile delinquents. These officers are specially trained and are subject to restrictions aiming to protect juveniles. For example, investigations of minors must be conducted only by juvenile offender officers, only during the daytime, not at the child’s school, and—when possible—in the presence of his or her parents (Rahav 1998). The questioning of minors under the age of 14 who have been involved in sexual or violent offenses is carried out by special “child investigators.” These are probation officers with university training in social work, employed by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services. Their questioning incorporates a variety of methods such as picture-drawing and role-play. Leading questions in these types of investigations are allowed, while the entire process must be audio-taped.

Of all offenses committed in 2011 by both minors and adults, 8.9 percent were committed by minors. In 2011, 1.6 percent of all minors ages 12 to 17 were suspected of having been involved in delinquency. During the past six years, this percentage was slightly higher, ranging between 2.0 and 2.2 percent. From 2004 onward, there was a slight decrease in the number of criminal records opened for minors. In 2004, 40,456 juvenile criminal records were opened as compared to 28,500 cases in 2010. In 2011, 46.2 percent of these criminal records were opened for violent behavior, 27.6 percent for property crime, and 12.7 percent for drug offenses (Tzioneet and Berman 2012, p. 446). While most juvenile delinquents have been involved in property crime in the past, we can see a recent decrease in this type of offense. There has also been a decrease in drug-related and violent crimes. While there is no statistical evidence, informal data reveals an increase in cyber-crimes, especially regarding bullying and harassment.

The percentage of Arab minors suspected of committing offenses in all age groups is much higher than those among Jewish minors (2.8 percent versus 1.7 percent, respectively, in 2011). This trend has been consistent over the years. Jewish and Arab females are much less involved in criminal acts than males. In 2004, 8.2 percent of all minors with criminal records were females. In 2011, their share decreased to 6.9 percent (Tzioneet and Berman 2012, p. 471).

Minors under the age of 14 may be detained for no more than 12 hours before being brought before a judge; in special circumstances, however, a senior police officer may order detainment for an additional 12 hours. A judge may order a continuation of the detainment for 10 days, followed by an additional 10 days (versus a total of 75 days for adult suspects). Minors may be detained only in special facilities, separate from adults. Parents or guardians must be informed immediately of the arrest and must be invited to be present during the questioning, unless there are special reasons for not doing so. In 2011, 6,298 juveniles were detained for varying periods of time (Tzioneet and Berman 2012, p. 487).

When a minor has been detained or arrested, a juvenile youth probation officer must be informed. The officer provides the police with a report on the minor, including his or her background and family. This report may include a recommendation that the file be closed due to lack of public interest or because it may impede the minor’s rehabilitation process. Thus the Israeli police may, in cases involving suspects who are minors, close the file or put it on hold. In such cases the suspect is warned that the file may be reopened if he or she continues to display deviant behavior and may be referred to further treatment by social services. If the minor complies, the file may be closed permanently and even removed from the records altogether. In any event, if the police do decide to press charges, they must do so no later than a year from the date of the offense. Prosecution at a later stage requires the approval of the attorney-general. The police are engaged in various preventive operations, mainly through community policing programs.

Correctional services for youth in Israel fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services. Most of these activities are the responsibility of the Ministry’s Division of Youth Development and Correctional Services, which administers seven services for at-risk youth and juvenile offenders (Khoury-Kassabri et al. 2009). One of these is the Juvenile Probation Services (JPS), a social-therapeutic service, which deals with minors who have been referred to it by police or by the courts. The juveniles in the JPS are involuntary clients; by law, the police must refer these minors to the JPS for a psychosocial evaluation (Hassin and Horowitz 1998). Juvenile probation officers are social workers whose task is to identify, diagnose, treat, and help minors involved in criminal activity. They submit a presentence report to the juvenile court. This includes a recommendation for handling the case. In addition, juvenile probation officers supervise juveniles under probation ordered by the court. The JPS carries out therapeutic and rehabilitation efforts under probation orders and other court treatment orders.

The work of the JPS evolved from several pieces of legislation, most prominently the 1971 Youth Act (trial, punishment, and modes of treatment) and its accompanying regulations. The act integrates therapeutic, social, and educational principles within the judicial system and defines the functions and authority of probation officers. In addition, the JPS are guided by the 1969 Probation Ordinance, which applies to both minors and adults. The Detention Law of 1996 defines guidelines for the detention of minors, the judicial process, and the responsibilities of probation officers. All probation officers in Israel are clinical social workers, and interventions derive mainly from social work expertise.

A growing number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are contracted and obliged to work with the welfare, educational, or absorption ministries or the national fund that finances a range of treatment and prevention programs. These organizations offer nonstatutory services such as operating hostels for juvenile delinquents, treating juvenile sexual offenders, offering family conferencing interventions, and providing crime prevention programs. In recent years, restorative justice and mediation programs have begun to be incorporated into the criminal justice procedure in Israel, as alternatives to going to trial when the offender is a juvenile.

Juveniles suspected of committing crimes are referred to juvenile courts. Juvenile judges, appointed especially for this role by the president of the Supreme Court in agreement with the Minister of Justice, specialize in protecting, diagnosing, treating, ruling, and punishing minors up to the age of 18. Several changes have been made to the Juvenile Law over the years, the most recent introduced in 2009. New regulations have followed the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child (UNCRC), which was ratified in Israel in 1991. For example, Article 14 of the new Juvenile Law states that a person cannot be prosecuted for an offense he or she committed when he or she was minor within one year of the crime. Israeli juvenile delinquents are not transferred to the adult court. The juvenile court must be located at a site that is not used for sessions of other courts.

Proceedings in these courts are closed to the general public, and all the minor’s personal details are confidential. All juveniles who have been detained or accused are entitled to be represented by a public attorney, and the judge may order that the minor be supervised by a probation officer or sent for observation during the course of the trial. In cases where a child investigator carries out the questioning, the investigator presents the minor’s testimony, along with the audio- and—sometimes—video-tape of the investigation. The same investigator may not deal with both the suspect and the victim in the same case.

If the court finds the minor guilty, the judge must receive a psychosocial report from the probation officer before determining the sentence. The court may then either convict and sentence the minor, order treatment, or make no order in cases of very minor or first-time offenses. In the majority of cases, treatment orders are made, which may include closed or open homes, probation, adult supervision, a fine or financial compensation, or any other course of action that—in the court’s view—is required for the minor’s treatment and rehabilitation. If the court convicts and sentences the minor, the normal sentencing options apply with several limitations: The death penalty is never allowed; minimum or mandatory penalties do not apply; imprisonment is available only for minors over the age of 14; the option of a closed home is available for a term that does not exceed the term of imprisonment available for that offense (this provision does not apply when a closed home is imposed as treatment).

The juvenile court may function as a civil court in matters related to minors and their legal status, cases of child custody, child protection, and child abuse. The Youth Law 1960 (Care and Supervision) authorizes juvenile judges to remove children from their homes in order to protect their safety. There are no status offenses in Israel. Children who are defined as being at risk are treated by welfare officers appointed by the juvenile court.

There are seven closed homes for juveniles run by the government. In addition, there is one private hostel and 50 hostels and homes run by NGOs. A total of 2, 499 minors are cared for in these institutions. Two-thirds of them are juvenile offenders and one-third are from the welfare division. There is one prison for juveniles up to the age of 21 (Offek 2006); minors under the age of 14 cannot be sent there. As of 2013, 160 juveniles are incarcerated in the juvenile prison, 100 of whom are detainees and 60 of whom are prisoners. Young female detainees and prisoners are incarcerated in the female-only prison in Israel.

Very few empirical evaluations of programs focusing on juvenile delinquents exist in Israel. The marginality of such assessments can be traced to the professional hegemony of social agents responsible for responding to this phenomenon. Professionalism is strongly linked to the welfare state ideology, which grants authorization to the professionals without requiring a thorough investigation of the outcomes of the various treatment programs. Indeed, policy-based research and evidence-based practice are new in Israel.

The handful of evaluation studies point to positive outcomes of programs with juvenile delinquents. Offek (2006) found out that the recidivism of juveniles who had committed sexual offenses and who participated in group therapy was 12 percent in a follow-up after 12 years. This is a significantly low level of recidivism among sex offenders in comparison to figures reported in studies in other countries. In addition, it was found that the participants’ attitudes toward sexual offenses changed significantly after the intervention. Khoury-Kassabri and colleagues (2010) found that violent juveniles who participated in cognitive-behavioral intervention reported lower espousal of violent behavior and lower levels of involvement in actual violence compared to adolescents’ reports on these measures prior to the intervention. Authors emphasize the need for more evaluation studies.

Broadly speaking, it is possible to identify three main phases characterizing the sociolegal responses to juvenile delinquency in Israel: welfare, children’s rights, and struggles with economic challenges.

Until 1922, juvenile delinquency was not defined in Israel as unique behavior requiring special measures. Minors who were brought before the court were sentenced as adults and were imprisoned, beaten, or fined. Influenced by the rise of the science of crime and the ideas of the positivist enterprise, developed in the Western world, children’s and youths’ involvement in crime was interpreted as being created by forces beyond their control. Regarded as victims, juvenile delinquents were seen as needing treatment and guidance rather than punishment. Indeed, the British Mandatory Government of Palestine enacted the Young Offender Act, which defined juvenile delinquency as behavior differing from adult criminality; this empowered judges to order supervision of juvenile delinquents by responsible adults. During the next decade, new laws were enacted, prohibiting corporal punishment and replacing imprisonment with institutional care. In 1937, probation officers were authorized to submit a presentence report. Medical practitioners, educators, and social workers took it upon themselves to identify, treat, and reform juveniles in distress and young delinquents.

With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the therapeutic model continued to dominate the juvenile justice system, and juvenile judges were seen as educators rather than law enforcement agents. This model—treating juvenile delinquents as victims who needed care—adopted welfare principles. It favored an informal approach over formal due process procedures, aiming to enable judges to evaluate relevant information regarding juvenile delinquents and their special needs and circumstances (Ajzenstadt 2005). The focus of this perspective was the individual child rather than the offense, and thus there was no need for defense counsel—who was regarded as disrupting the therapeutic process, in which children were encouraged to speak freely about themselves and their offenses. Thus most juveniles accused of criminal behavior appeared in Israeli juvenile courts without legal representation, due to the perception that appearing before the court was part of a therapeutic process (Borowski and Ajzenstadt 2005).

The perception of juvenile delinquents as requiring help existed in the context of two social and political processes: the process of nation-building and the creation of the welfare state. During the prestate period, the involvement of young people in crime was seen as part of the larger social problem of child neglect and abuse, which was considered traumatic for the newly developing society. Children were regarded as being required to undertake the burden of the Zionist revolution and the protection of the family and its normative functioning (Razi 2009). Deviant children were seen as harming this project. In order to facilitate this mission, a wealth of educational and health programs were established to ensure that the children would grow up as healthy individuals, ready to serve the nation and the world (see discussion in Shilo 2007). After the establishment of the state, concern for children’s health and their well-being was institutionalized.

Responses to juvenile delinquency were grounded in assumptions about the “deserving” groups and their status in the new country. Members of the hegemonic segments of society considered the children of new immigrants—mainly from North Africa and Asia—as unfit to become full members in the community. Their involvement in crime was considered a sign of their immorality and inability to be part of modern society. The crime-control method applied for their treatment was discipline, which was intended to normalize them and enable them to become “deserving” citizens.

Furthermore, this approach to juvenile delinquency was developed within the sociopolitical structure of the welfare state, adopting its core cultural foundations, such as solidarity, universality, and professionalization (Weijers 1999). In this vein, criminal process and professional intervention were seen as the duty of state institutions aiming to ensure the well-being of young citizens. Adopting this perspective, politicians and experts insisted that it is the role of the government to assist children in distress and their families, so that they might become productive members of society. Distressed, sick, and uneducated children—as well as juvenile delinquents—were seen as incapable of carrying out their role. The educational and welfare institutions therefore took it upon themselves to care for them, ensuring that they were healthy in order to secure the nation’s future. During the second half of the 1970s, a set of social security measures were introduced in order to pursue these aims. For example, Israel was among the first countries to ban the use of corporal punishment in schools and at home. The 1977 Penal Act bans any form of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse and neglect of children (Khoury-Kassabri 2006).

The strong belief of the founders of the welfare state in the ability of professionals to cure social ills paved the way for professional groups such as medical practitioners, social workers, and other experts to play a central role in the prevention and treatment of young offenders. Throughout the years, probation officers, psychologists, and social workers were engaged in the youth department of the police, the juvenile prison, and other institutions providing services to juvenile delinquents. Finally, the first juvenile judges were educators and social workers, who aimed to use their authority to respond in a therapeutic manner to the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency.

During the 1980s, activists and professionals challenged the welfare approach to juvenile delinquency, criticizing the paternalistic nature of the juvenile justice system, demanding to replace it with procedures of due process, and ensuring that juvenile delinquents’ rights be strictly observed and protected (see discussion on children’s rights movement in Israel in Ben-Arieh and Kimchi 2007). Senior officials in the office of the Attorney-General, the Ministry of Justice, and members of NGOs working in the area of children’s rights insisted that the Juvenile Law and other policies dealing with the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency should protect the rights of juvenile delinquents. They acknowledged that the absence of legal representation in the juvenile court harmed the rights of minors in the criminal justice process (Borowski and Ajzenstadt 2005). Supporting their calls with the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Israel in 1991, they demanded that the judicial procedures be changed in order to ensure young delinquents were granted their rights during the criminal process. In particular, advocates of children’s rights challenged the assumption that appearing before the juvenile court is a therapeutic procedure that does not require the presence of lawyers.

As a result of this movement, new regulations were enacted regarding juvenile sentencing and the administration of juvenile justice. In July 1998, the Israeli Minister of Justice approved the provision that appointed public defenders for all juveniles brought before the court. In 1997, the Minister of Justice established a committee, headed by Judge Saviona Rotlevi, to examine the basic principles of law, children, and the implementation of principles from the UNCRC in legislation. In 2003, the committee submitted a report including suggestions for amendments to the 1971 Juvenile Law (trial, punishment, and modes of treatment). In 2008, an amendment (no. 14) to this law was passed; it was implemented in July 2009. This law reflects the UNCRC principles with respect to the “best interests of the child.”

Advocates of children’s rights have continually emphasized the state’s responsibility for youth delinquency, resisting attempts to individualize the causes of crime that minors commit. They refuse to focus on individuals’ contributions to their delinquency and instead attribute this involvement in crime to a host of social factors, which rest within the state’s responsibility and not with an offender’s personal character. Minors brought before the court continue to be represented by the participants in the various debates regarding juvenile delinquents as weak, vulnerable, and in need of state protection both before they committed the offense and during the court proceedings. Moreover, children’s rights’ advocates blame cuts made in recent years to the welfare-system budget, claiming that welfare agents are unable to identify and treat young children who are at risk of degenerating to a life of criminality. They represent this neglect as an abuse of children’s natural rights to grow up in a healthy environment, claiming that all children have rights to obtain access to the best treatment.

This approach stands in sharp contrast to the rights discourse that has evolved in many Western states, where it has been influenced by the neoliberal concept of responsibilization: It views children and their families as being responsible for their actions (Kemshall 2008; Such and Walker 2005). It shifts the responsibility for juvenile welfare from the state to offenders, their families, and the communities, legitimizing limited state involvement in the provision of solutions for these children and leading to adulteration of youth justice (Hogeveen 2006). One outcome of this has been the reduction of welfare programs and the infliction of harsher penalties on juvenile delinquents, who are required to “pay” for their decision to become involved in crime (Kemshall 2008; Such and Walker 2005).

In Israel, calls for children’s rights have remained independent of the responsibility/justice discourse regarding these children and their families. This remains connected to the belief that the state has a responsibility to provide rehabilitation that will ensure children’s proper development. In addition, efforts by the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) to hold parents responsible for their children’s crimes have failed, nor have any changes been introduced regarding the age of maturity.

Finally, the Knesset has resisted attempts to impose harsher penalties on juvenile delinquents. Discussions leading to the new Juvenile Law favor the development of treatment programs, ensuring rehabilitation rather than harsh punishments while responding to juvenile crime. This law is regarded as a mix of rights and treatment: Children’s rights are meant to create the framework within which treatment will be provided.

The amendment to the Juvenile Law reflects this mix. For example, Article 1A(A) indicates that the realization of minors’ rights, the implementation of jurisdiction, and the proceedings against them shall be carried out while safeguarding their dignity and giving due weight to considerations of their treatment, care, integration, and their age and level of maturity. Article 12 allows a child to express his or her opinion before a judge makes a decision. Similarly, Article 37(b) requires that the detention of a child should be used only as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.

During the 1980s, the welfare approach to juvenile delinquency was criticized not only by members of the children’s rights movement—who claimed that the juvenile justice system neglected the rights of children brought before the juvenile court—but also by various sectors criticizing the therapeutic approach as costly and inefficient. During the 1990s, politicians initiated various campaigns, concerned with the inability of the system to reduce levels of juvenile delinquency. Members of the Knesset put forward numerous suggestions to abandon the unsuccessful welfare model and respond sternly to children who commit violent crimes or even to those defined as being at risk for becoming involved in criminal activity. These calls included suggestions to enact curfew laws and increase monitoring and surveillance measures in places where young people gather. Several members of parliament suggested amending the 1971 Juvenile Law (trial, punishment, and modes of treatment) and determining minimum penalties for violent juvenile crime), arguing that the Juvenile Law allows for light penalties and does not deter youth from committing crimes. In order to deal effectively with this issue, they claimed that the law should include minimum penalties. The Knesset did not pass this bill. Other members of the Knesset suggested holding parents responsible for their children’s crimes, and a bill was introduced to enact an amendment to the 1967 penal law to fine parents whose children committed an offense.

After violent acts in which youth were involved as either victims or perpetrators, several waves of moral panic occurred, with children being portrayed as threatening public safety with dire consequences to the foundations of Israeli society. Cohen (1972) defined a moral panic as “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests … Sometimes the subject of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight … It might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way society conceives itself” (p. 9).

In Israel, concerns about the harmful consequences of juvenile delinquency were voiced by politicians, professionals, and members of civil groups, such as victims’ parents, who took it upon themselves to raise public awareness of what they perceived as an alarming problem.

Media reports blamed the lenient approach of the welfare model and—in particular—the light sentences imposed by the juvenile court for failing to discourage violence among children. Moreover, they argued that overconsideration of offenders’ rights—such as immunity from the publication of criminals’ personal details and the automatic provision of a public defender—did not deter juveniles from committing crimes. These claims were accompanied by calls on the government to “get tough” on crime involving minors in order to return safety to the streets and private homes. Moral panic about minors’ involvement in violent crime led to the establishment of two public committees to design a national program for reducing child and youth violence: the Vilnai Committee National Program for the Reduction of Child and Youth Violence in the Israeli Educational system in 1999 and an interministerial committee that was authorized to conduct a weekly examination of the various agencies dealing with child violence (Government of Israel 2005; Decision No. 3687; State Comptroller’s Report 2008, p. 1076). Their main recommendation was to define treatment as a national mission and to devote efforts coordinated by various ministries to treat juveniles in the best professional manner possible.

Calls were made for cutting welfare expenditures and shifting responsibility from the state to the parents and the young offenders in the context of the movement of Israel from a collectivist, social, and economic framework toward a more individualistic, materialistic, socioeconomic regime, which reduced state intervention and liberalized the capital market (Razin and Sadka 1993; Shalev 2000). The neoliberal economic and politics mode of governance adopted by the Israeli government is characterized—among other things—by the ethos of responsibilitization and individualization (see Kemshall 2008; Muncie 2005). As part of this, responsibility for juvenile delinquency has shifted from the state to the children, their families—and sometimes their communities (Such and Walker 2005). During these years, the local market in Israel opened up to multinationals and imported goods, moving Israel toward a post-Fordist economy marked by a neoliberal agenda, whose aim was to downsize the state and minimize its role in the market (Filc 2005). Privatization and globalization, accompanied by an ideology supporting reduced state responsibility for the rights and welfare of individuals, governed policies in the labor market, as well as in the fields of health, education, and welfare. Support for the welfare state gradually decreased, and health, education, and welfare services were privatized (Ajzenstadt and Rosenhek 2000).

This led, among other things, to a severe shortage of employment of social workers, among whom were probation officers caring for juvenile delinquents. Indeed, in 2001, the State Comptroller observed that the Child Welfare Authority, which owned institutions for children defined as being at risk (ages 13 to 18)—some of whom had committed offenses—had a long waiting list. As a result it was argued that some of them continued to be involved in criminal activity and were at risk of drifting further into lives as criminals (Israel, the State Comptroller’s Report 2001, p. 97). Seven years later, the State Comptroller reported that “The probation services lack 240 professional and 50 administrative positions” (Israel, the State Comptroller’s Report 2001, p. 1061). Moreover, the small group of probation officers was required to assume roles in addition to their traditional ones; this led to a flow of files to the overburdened probation services.

Realistic compliance with cuts in governmental spending in this area led social workers and probation officers to adopt a managerial approach. They processed files and cases instead of providing careful, personal, individualized treatment. In addition, rehabilitative initiatives were canceled, due to low budgets and economic constraints. In the United States, this approach led professionals dealing with juvenile delinquency to abandon the welfare ethos and develop an administrative system of case processing (see Bishop and Decker 2006; Simon 1990). By contrast, Israeli law enforcement agents continued to adhere to welfare values. For example, juvenile judges felt that the financial cuts had led to a dearth of members of their profession; they were obliged to move from one court to another in order to be able to deal with all the juvenile cases. Naturally, they paid less attention to the treatment of children in their courtroom and more to the administration of justice. However, they insisted that the treatment component not be neglected. Probation officers did not attend court cases dealing with detentions, since this was a heavy financial burden; they chose instead to send written reports evaluating risk. They complained that this administrative treatment of juvenile delinquents lacked the personal relationships that allowed probation officers to learn the case, get to know the family, and find solutions for the child, which are necessary to ensure adequate treatment. At the same time, efforts were made to continue to provide as many preventive and rehabilitative services as possible. Thus they adopted various techniques in order to provide treatment even in a very limited manner. One technique that allowed probation officers to provide some help to juvenile delinquents was the development of a gradation scale, allowing them to identify children who were at acute risk and were subsequently treated (Israel, State Comptroller’s Report 2008, p. 1080).

These efforts were strongly linked to welfare ideas and beliefs. Probation officers and social workers insisted that economic considerations should not neglect the traditional ethos of caring for children in need. Politicians called upon the government to assume its role and cancel the deep cuts in the welfare budget, demanding that the Ministry of Justice add more juvenile judges in order to give young offenders the best available treatment.

The shortage of probation officers led to a reliance on new agents dealing with juvenile delinquency—mainly NGOs and law enforcement agencies. Private and nonprofit agencies started to play an important role in various preventive, assessment, and treatment programs. The Juvenile Probation Division work plan for 2010, for example, contained a long list of programs for juvenile delinquents provided by NGOs (see Israel, State Comptroller’s Report 2008).

Muncie (2005) argued that NGOs and private organizations served the state mode of “governing at a distance” (Rose and Miller 1992), as services were delivered indirectly by nonstate agencies (see discussion of this practice in Israel in the case of services to the elderly in Ajzenstadt and Rosenhek 2000). In Israel, however, NGOs’ intervention in the field of juvenile justice has not completely relieved the state of its responsibility for youth in conflict with the law. Most programs are directly financed by the state and are supervised or coordinated by probation officers. The involvement of both NGOs and private organizations as providers of services is perceived by social probation officers as a positive contribution to the rehabilitative projects, especially in times of financial cuts. This perspective is not surprising, as NGOs in Israel are considered an implementation arm of the state and not as its replacement (Almog-Bar and Gidron 2009, p. 25).

The operation of these programs by NGOs 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 programs, focusing on specific groups of the population for whom certain services were not previously accessible. At the same time, it is important to note that the fact that these programs are not operated by the state raises questions regarding their ability and desire to develop long-term programs within a short-range working environment—which depends on “soft money”—and general concerns about the ways in which profit and economic considerations have become factors in their activities (see discussion in Almog-Bar and Ajzenstadt 2010).

In addition to services provided by NGOs, law enforcement agencies—mainly the police and the juvenile prison—provide rehabilitative programs. For example, the juvenile prison Offek offers a wealth of treatment programs, replacing those previously offered in the community. While representatives of law enforcement agencies and the welfare services have appraised the prison as an institution that provides juveniles with many opportunities, the representative of the youth unit in the Public Defense Office warns that prison should be considered a last resort, reserved only for those children who cannot be rehabilitated in the community. This therefore requires the state to establish services in the community.

Youth justice in Israel is driven by changing rationalities, norms, and values, which are socially and culturally contextualized (see Goldson and Hughes 2010; Muncie 2005). A detailed analysis of the various policies and programs points to an overarching ideology characterizing the sociolegal response to juvenile delinquency in Israel over time—a welfare orientation that has been modified according to ideological influences and practical considerations. At the same time, it has continued to adopt informal, needs-oriented, and child-centered principles.

Ideological, economic, and practical challenges to the welfare model have led to the creation of a hybrid approach to juvenile delinquency within the context of the neoliberal regime. The Israeli approach has not abandoned its belief in and commitment to the welfare ethos. Professionals and legislators continue to consider the reasons and the appropriate societal responses to the engagement of juveniles in crime in welfare terms, but they do so within a modified ideological and practical framework. The rehabilitative narrative is rooted within the notion of rehabilitation as the primary tool of preventing and responding to youth crime, echoing the welfare state ideology of solidarity with those who are unable to care for themselves. The state is seen as the appropriate agency responsible for securing order and preventing crime, while continuing to provide welfare.

The shrinking of the welfare state, the privatization of some of its services, the reduced role of the state in the administration of welfare, and the abridged involvement in the welfare field have opened the welfare involvement with juvenile delinquency to new interventions and rationales. This has led to a modified welfare model, which is strongly committed to the therapeutic nature traditionally inherent in societal reaction to juvenile delinquency.

Thus sociolegal attitudes toward juvenile delinquency still retain strong links to the core principles and beliefs of the welfare state, which are deeply rooted in the welfare culture of Israeli society and have been mixed with a strong concern for children (see Sabatier 1993). The rationale of treatment and rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents are considered to rest within the state’s responsibility to ensure the healthy, moral growth of youth—still regarded as the backbone of society. Calls for retribution and even claims about financial cuts in the area of juvenile delinquency have contradicted existing values and cultural assumptions grounded in the ideology of the welfare state; they have thus been rejected. Despite the changing circumstances—in the field of child care in general and juvenile delinquency in particular—Israel still adheres to the basic principles of the welfare state. Or, at least, it has not ignored them, as has been the case in other welfare states (see discussion on immigration policy in Yishai 1998 and Gal 2008). Within this context, the modified rehabilitative approach that has been created reserves and maintains various central aspects of the cultural attributes of the welfare state while integrating a few aspects of neoliberal conceptions in relation to juvenile delinquency policy.