The underlying theme of the book is that a qualitative change has taken place in the politics of crime control in the UK since the early 1990s. It provides an overview of recent government initiatives in the field of crime and punishment, reviewing both the policies themselves, the perceived problems and issues they seek to address, and the broader social and political context in which this is taking place.

The New Politics of Youth Crime argues that the centrality of 'law and order' to the New Labour project has generated a youth justice strategy which threatens to deepen the problems it purports to solve. Analysing the profound changes in UK youth crime in the 1980s, this book posits the French Social Prevention Initiative of the 1980s as an alternative model for a genuinely 'joined-up', social democratic response to the increasingly complex problem of youth crime in Europe.

Winner, 2020 ACJS Outstanding Book Award, given by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences A major statement on the juvenile justice system by one of America’s leading experts The juvenile court lies at the intersection of youth policy and crime policy. Its institutional practices reflect our changing ideas about children and crime control. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court provides a sweeping overview of the American juvenile justice system’s development and change over the past century. Noted law professor and criminologist Barry C. Feld places special emphasis on changes over the last 25 years—the ascendance of get tough crime policies and the more recent Supreme Court recognition that “children are different.” Feld’s comprehensive historical analyses trace juvenile courts’ evolution though four periods—the original Progressive Era, the Due Process Revolution in the 1960s, the Get Tough Era of the 1980s and 1990s, and today’s Kids Are Different era. In each period, changes in the economy, cities, families, race and ethnicity, and politics have shaped juvenile courts’ policies and practices. Changes in juvenile courts’ ends and means—substance and procedure—reflect shifting notions of children’s culpability and competence. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court examines how conservative politicians used coded racial appeals to advocate get tough policies that equated children with adults and more recent Supreme Court decisions that draw on developmental psychology and neuroscience research to bolster its conclusions about youths’ reduced criminal responsibility and diminished competence. Feld draws on lessons from the past to envision a new, developmentally appropriate justice system for children. Ultimately, providing justice for children requires structural changes to reduce social and economic inequality—concentrated poverty in segregated urban areas—that disproportionately expose children of color to juvenile courts’ punitive policies. Historical, prescriptive, and analytical, The Evolution of the Juvenile Court evaluates the author’s past recommendations to abolish juvenile courts in light of this new evidence, and concludes that separate, but reformed, juvenile courts are necessary to protect children who commit crimes and facilitate their successful transition to adulthood.

In recent years, western societies have experienced a fundamental transformation in the way crime is understood and dealt with. Against the backdrop of a current great interest in narratives in criminology, this book draws on a narrative perspective to explore this transformation. Drawing on data from Germany, the book focuses on changing narratives of youth crime in recent decades and the exact narratives that have been used, abandoned, invented or criticized in order to instil particular understandings of crime and measures to act against it. The author draws upon a wide range of sources, including debates on youth crime in six parliaments from 1970 to 2012; articles on youth crime in four police and six social work journals from 1970 to 2009; and case studies with 15 young defendants who were interviewed before and after their trial and whose trial was observed. In doing so, the author reconstructs narratives over several decades and, overall, reveals a fascinating and multifaceted scope of narratives of youth crime. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of youth crime and justice, as well as criminology, sociology, politics and social work more broadly.

Analysing the profound changes in UK youth crime in the 1980s, this text posits the French Social Prevention Initiative of the 1980s as an alternative model for a genuinely 'joined up', social democratic response to the problem of youth crime.

The Second Edition of this best-selling text provides a fully revised and up-to-date critical analysis of a wide range of issues surrounding young people, disorder and crime. To develop a comprehensive criminology of youth the book deliberately moves beyond traditional criminological concerns and draws insights from other academic disciplines such as cultural studies, gender studies, media studies, social policy, social work, political science and human geography. Now thoroughly updated, this second edition has been rewritten to include new material on anti-social behaviour, street crime, youth gangs, victimisation, social exclusion, drugs, surveillance, crime prevention, policing and restoration as well as a sustained critical analysis of New Labour's youth, social and criminal justice reforms as they have emerged over the past five years. To make sense of these developments theories of risk management, governance, globalisation and cultural criminology are introduced and assessed. Building on the strengths of the first edition, this highly influential work remains the most integrated and comprehensive analysis of theory, research, policy and politics in this area. It is an essential text for students of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, youth studies, social policy and social work.

What should we do with teenagers who commit crimes? In this book, two leading scholars in law and adolescent development argue that juvenile justice should be grounded in the best available psychological science, which shows that adolescence is a distinctive state of cognitive and emotional development. Although adolescents are not children, they are also not fully responsible adults.

Antisocial and criminal behaviour involving children and young people have been a cause of heightened public concern in England and Wales for more than a quarter of a century. It has been the subject of numerous policy papers, research studies and academic assessments as well as extensive newspaper, radio and television coverage. This has set the context for an ever expanding volume of legislation seeking to amend and improve society's official response. Yet despite a massive injection of resources into the youth justice system the results achieved have been unimpressive, reoffending remains a persistent problem and the general public appears to have little confidence in the youth justice system. The time is ripe therefore for a new look at the problem of youth offending and government and society's response to this. This book accompanies the Report of the Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour, published 2010. In it leading authorities in the field, from a variety of different disciplines, review youth crime and different responses to it, focussing particularly on England and Wales but also analysing for comparative purposes the nature of responses in other parts of the world, especially Canada. It will be essential reading for practitioners, policy makers, students and others with an interest in addressing one of today's most intractable social problems.

This text provides an analysis of the most recent developments in state policy response to youth crime, in tandem with the implementation of the far-reaching provision of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

A startling examination of the deliberate criminalization of black youths from the 1930s to today A stark disparity exists between black and white youth experiences in the justice system today. Black youths are perceived to be older and less innocent than their white peers. When it comes to incarceration, race trumps class, and even as black youths articulate their own experiences with carceral authorities, many Americans remain surprised by the inequalities they continue to endure. In this revealing book, Carl Suddler brings to light a much longer history of the policies and strategies that tethered the lives of black youths to the justice system indefinitely. The criminalization of black youth is inseparable from its racialized origins. In the mid-twentieth century, the United States justice system began to focus on punishment, rather than rehabilitation. By the time the federal government began to address the issue of juvenile delinquency, the juvenile justice system shifted its priorities from saving delinquent youth to purely controlling crime, and black teens bore the brunt of the transition. In New York City, increased state surveillance of predominantly black communities compounded arrest rates during the post–World War II period, providing justification for tough-on-crime policies. Questionable police practices, like stop-and-frisk, combined with media sensationalism, cemented the belief that black youth were the primary cause for concern. Even before the War on Crime, the stakes were clear: race would continue to be the crucial determinant in American notions of crime and delinquency, and black youths condemned with a stigma of criminality would continue to confront the overwhelming power of the state.