In the minds of the general public, young people and crime are intrinsically linked; wide-spread belief persists that such activities are a result of the ‘permissive 1960s’ and the changing face of the traditional nuclear family. Roger Hopkins Burke challenges these preconceptions and offers a detailed and comprehensive introduction to youth crime and the subsequent response from the criminal justice system. This extended and fully updated new edition explores: The development of young people and attempts to educate, discipline, control and construct them, Criminological explanations and empirical evidence of why young people become involved in criminality, The system established by the Youth Justice Board, its theoretical foundations, and the extent of its success, Alternative approaches to youth justice around the globe and the apparent homogenisation throughout the neoliberal world. The second edition also includes new chapters looking at youth justice in the wider context of social policy and comparative youth justice. Young People, Crime and Justice is the perfect undergraduate critical introduction to the youth justice system, following a unique left-realist perspective while providing a balanced account of the critical criminology agenda, locating the practical working of the system in the critical socio-economic context. It is essential reading for students taking modules on youth crime, youth justice and contemporary social and criminal justice policy. Text features include key points, chapter summaries and review questions.

How is the modern world shaping young people and youth crime? What impact is this having on the latest policies and practice? Are current youth justice services working? With contributions from leading researchers in the field, this book offers an insightful, scholarly and critical analysis of such key issues. Youth Offending and Youth Justice engages constructively with current policy and practice debates, tackling issues such as the criminalisation and penalisation of youth, sentencer decision-making, the incarceration of young people and the role of public opinion. It also features an applied focus on professional practice. Drawing on a wide range of high-quality research, this book will enrich the work of practitioners, managers, policy-makers, students and academics in social work, youth work, criminal justice and youth justice in the UK and beyond.

This book provides an empirically grounded, theoretically informed account of recent changes to the youth justice system in England and Wales, focusing on the introduction of elements of restorative justice into the heart of the criminal justice system, and the implementation of referral orders and youth offender panels. Taken together, this amounts to the most radical overhaul of the youth justice system in the last half century, fundamentally changing the underlying values of the system away from an 'exclusionary punitive justice' and towards an 'inclusionary restorative justice'. The book explores the implications of these changes by using the lens of a detailed study of the implementation of referral orders and youth offender panels to explore wider issues about youth justice policy and the integration of restorative justice principles. It draws upon the findings of an in-depth study of the pilots established prior to the national rollout of referral orders in April 2002. The book will be essential reading not only for those involved in the task of implementing the new youth justice, but others with an interest in the criminal justice system and in restorative justice who need to know about the far reaching reforms to the youth justice system and their impact.

There is an impasse in current thinking about youth crime and justice, represented by punitive and harmful practices, and liberal objections to these processes on the other, based predominantly on arguments for ‘rehabilitation’. This book aims to arrive at an alternative strategy for resolving the tensions between young people – especially those on and beyond the margins – and the social world which frames their lives. The book is split into three sections: Part 1 focuses on young people, their attitudes and behaviour; Part 2 considers the way in which their behaviour is constructed as criminal and then addressed; Part 3 considers the limitations of current practices and potential alternatives. Within this broad framework, the differentiated and contested nature of young people’s experiences and our (and their) ideas of ‘youth’ can be counterposed to prevailing one-sided and often discriminatory assumptions about them; in order then to open up questions about the nature and purposes of the youth justice system, and to introduce some possibilities for reconstructing it according to fundamental principles of rights, welfare and social justice. Doing Justice to Young People will be essential reading for anybody working in or studying youth crime and youth justice.

How does the law deal with young offenders, and to what extent does the law protect and promote the rights of young people in conflict with the law? These are the central issues addressed by Young Offenders and the Law in its examination of the legal response to the phenomenon of youth offending, and the contemporary forces that shape the law. This book develops the reader’s understanding of the sociological, criminological, historical, political, and philosophical approaches to youth offending in England and Wales, and also presents a comparative review of developments in other jurisdictions. It provides a comprehensive critical analysis of the legislative and policy framework currently governing the operation of the youth justice system in England and Wales, and evaluates the response of the legal system in light of modern legislative framework and international best practice. All aspects of trial and pre-trial procedure affecting young offenders are covered, including: the age of criminal responsibility, police powers, trial procedure, together with the full range of detention facilities and non-custodial options. Young Offenders and the Law provides, for the first time, a primary source of reference on youth offending. It is an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Law, Criminology, and Criminal Justice Studies.

This book aims to provide an understanding of youth offending and policy and practice responses, particularly the risk-focused approaches that have underpinned much recent academic research, youth justice policy and interventions designed to reduce and prevent problem behaviour. There has been growing concern, however, on the part of critical criminologists and others, about the theoretical, epistemological, methodological and ethical bases of risk-focused research with young people. They have pointed particularly to the overly-deterministic and prescriptive nature of the risk factor paradigm. This book aims to meet the need for an exploration of youth justice and youth offending which takes account of the origins and contemporary manifestations of risk-focused work with young people. It analyses the influence of concepts of risk upon policy development in both England and Wales as well as internationally, highlighting tensions between the proponents of risk factor research and methodological and ethical criticisms of the risk factor paradigm. It will be essential reading for anybody wishing to understand risk factor explanation of crime, contemporary youth justice policy and responses to offending behaviour.

This key book examines how we can prevent children from engaging in offending behaviour and therefore prevent the pre-school children of today from influencing the crime statistics of tomorrow.

This book brings together leading authorities in the field to analyse theoretical, empirical and policy issues relating to this neglected group of people, exploring different approaches to both crime prevention and offender treatment.

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. How and why have certain aspects of young people's behaviour come to be perceived as 'anti-social' and 'criminal'? Are young people now more of a threat than ever before? How can we make sense of New Labour's youth justice reforms? Is the youth justice system soft on crime? Are young people more in need of protection than disciplinary punishment? To develop a comprehensive criminology of youth the book deliberately moves.

This book explores the journey of young people through a Secure Training Centre and, more generally, the criminal justice system in the UK. It examines the extent to which young people have been failed by the system at every stage of their lives, with incarceration used as a means of removing ‘the problem’ from society. To explore this process, the authors utilise an integrated theoretical framework to develop a new rehabilitative approach focused on developing positive outcomes for young people. The book deploys a social impact measurement methodology to evaluate the experience and outcomes of youth justice interventions at a Secure Training Centre. Such an approach provides a fresh perspective on the youth justice debate which has traditionally utilised outcome data to measure immediate impact relating to recidivism and is therefore not focused on the young person holistically. Using a social impact framework to evaluate youth justice, underpinned by an integrated theoretical framework, allows for assessment to be made which place the young person at the centre of evaluation.