Understanding Youth And Crime


Book Description

Reviewers' comments on the first edition "This is an excellent introductory textbook on youth and crime. It is excellent not only in its analysis of criminological questions about youthful offending, but also because it positions the debate within a wider context of the relationship between young people and society." Young People Now "The style is lively and readable, and the reader is pointed unobtrusively within the text towards the work of the leading authors in the field... a thorough and thoughtful introduction to the subject." Social Policy "a critical and scholarly summary of the state of research and theorizing around 'youth and crime' ... This book provides a useful and challenging overview of the topic for undergraduate students." The Times Higher Education Supplement This book is an accessible introduction to the subject of youth and crime. The author explores the social construction of childhood and youth, and looks at the role of the media in creating a strong association of young people with crime and disorder, which sustains processes of marginalization and exclusion and leads to frequent 'panics' about youth crime. The importance of media representations of race and gender in these processes are also explored. The second edition is substantially revised and updated to take account of new political events and legislative developments, including: A new chapter on the phenomenon of 'cybercrime' A critical examination of recent developments in youth justice policy A new chapter on the impact of globalization on young people, which raises major issues around poverty, war and the commercial exploitation of children. This is a key text for students in criminology, sociology, social policy, and cultural studies.




Youth and Crime


Book Description

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.




Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice


Book Description

Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.




Youth Crime and Justice


Book Description

Building upon the success of the first edition, this second - and substantially revised - edition of Youth Crime and Justice comprises a range of cutting-edge contributions from leading national and international researchers. The book: Situates youth crime and youth justice within historical and social-structural contexts; Critically examines policy and practice trends and their relation to knowledge and ‘evidence’; and Presents a forward looking vision of a rights compliant youth justice with integrity. An authoritative and accessible book, Youth Crime and Justice (2nd ed) provides a coherent, comprehensive and fully up-to-date analysis of contemporary developments and debates. A must for researchers, teachers, students and practitioners.




Youth Justice


Book Description

This book provides a comprehensive, student-friendly and critical introduction to youth justice in England and Wales, offering a balanced evaluation of its development, rationale, nature and evidence base. It explores the evolution of definitions and explanations of youth offending and examines the responses to it that constitute youth justice. Bringing together theory, policy and practice, this book provides a balanced exposition of contemporary youth justice debates, including detailed discussions of governmental rationales, policy developments, practical issues and an extensive evaluation of critical academic positions. It includes a range of features designed to engage and inspire students: ‘Stop and think’: Activities challenging students to reflect on important issues. ‘Conversations’: Discussions of key themes and issues from the perspectives and experiences of relevant stakeholders, including policy makers and activists. ‘Telling it like it is’: Testimonies giving voice to the personalised, subjective and contentious viewpoints of youth justice influencers. ‘Controversies and debates’: Prompts to stimulate students to question and critique established knowledge and understanding by considering alternative angles. ‘Recurring theme alerts’: Boxes flagging recurring themes in the developing construction of youth offending and youth justice. The new edition has been fully revised and updated and includes discussion of revised National Standards in Youth Justice, the new ‘Child First’ strategic objective for youth justice, the ‘trauma informed practice’ movement, the impact of coronavirus on children in the Youth Justice System and the continued impact of austerity on policy and practice. This book is essential reading for students taking courses in youth justice, youth offending, youth crime, youth work and social policy.




Understanding Youth Crime


Book Description

This title was first published in 2003. Adolescence is popularly understood as a transitional phase of turbulence and extremes. It is also often associated with 'trouble'. Criminal justice statistics, however, reveal that youth criminality remains a relatively rare phenomenon, less than one percent of the total adolescent population in any given year. This exceptional book is based upon a major Australian research programme to consider the key social factors impacting upon the lives of young people. A sample of 1,300 young people was divided into three major subgroups: a 'control' group, drawn from state secondary schools and closely approximating the general population; a chronically marginalized cohort representing a 'vulnerable group', and a group of offenders, most of whom were incarcerated at the time of the research. With its rich data source and highly integrated structure, the book makes a major contribution to our understanding of adolescent criminality and associated policy both in Australia and internationally.




Reforming Juvenile Justice


Book Description

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.




Understanding Youth Offending


Book Description

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.




Understanding Youth In Late Modernity


Book Description

"Understanding Youth in Late Modernity is a highly readable book which lends itself bothas a solid introduction and a reference point to the historical developments and theoreticaldebates taking place within the discipline of youth studies. This book provides a highly accessible text for anybody interested in the subject of youth and its changing role in late modernity. I thoroughly recommend it." Journal of Contemporary European Studies This illuminating new book embeds our understanding of the youth question within a historical context. It shows how the ideas of past political action, in conjunction with the diverse paradigms of social science disciplines, have shaped modern conceptions of the youth question. This relationship between the political and the academic is then explored through a detailed examination of contemporary debates about youth, in areas such as; transitions, education, crime policy and criminology, consumption and youth culture. From this analysis the book is able to show how the youth question in late modernity is being shaped. This important text includes: A historical overview of the making of modern youth, identifying major changes that took place over three centuries Examples of how political and academic responses construct youth as a social problem An evaluation of the impact of social change in late modernity on our understanding of the youth question and the everyday lives of the young. The book concludes by suggesting that in contemporary understandings of the youth question significant differences exist between the political and the academic. Major challenges exist if this gap is to be addressed and a new public social science needs to emerge that reconstitutes debates about youth within a form of communicative democracy. Understanding Youth in Late Modernity is key reading for students and academics interested in the historical conception of the youth problem, its evolution throughout modernity and endeavours to find a solution.




Understanding Youth and Crime


Book Description

Youth has been a focus of the sociologies of deviance, popular culture, and criminology. The text reassesses the growing body of writing and research about crime and young people. It provides a critical introduction to the study of youth, crime and punishment of the social construction of youth, crime and punishment, an examination of developments in policy and practice since the 1970s and an assessment of new trends in research and theory. It offers a critical treatment of the marginalization of young people as spectacular and deviant and calls for a criminolgy that listens to youth.