This book presents a critique of the traditional responses to youth crime by criminal justice agencies in Australia, UK, New Zealand, USA, Canada, and a vision of how these agencies could respond more effectively. The critique examines the ways in which traditional criminal justice approaches trap young people into, rather than turn them away from, a life of crime. The vision is for criminal justice agencies - police, courts, and corrections - to become more pro-active partners in society's efforts to guide young people towards becoming happy and productive citizens; for these agencies to focus less on the exercise of retributive powers and to embrace restorative approaches; and for agencies to develop a crime prevention role through partnership with community organisations. Author Paul Omaji argues against concentrating resources on the symptom when the underlying causes are within our intellectual grasp and amenable to effective criminal justice responses. Omaji demonstrates the capacity of criminal justice agencies to become constructive partners with community organisations in preventing youth crime and constructs ground rules for high impact partnerships.

The authors describe what is known about Canadian youth crime, and the operation of the youth justice system in the context of the changes in the law that are taking place. The authors posit that the youth justice system has a relatively modest impact on youth crime. In order to respond intelligently to it and to evaluate the response of the state, two sets of information must be understood. First, society must try to understand what 'youth crime' looks like in Canada. Second, in order to understand 1 and evaluate 1 the changes that are being made in youth justice legislation in Canada, a clear understanding of the manner in which the youth justice system currently operates is necessary.

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.

The problem of how to respond to violence involving young people continues to challenge youth workers and policy makers across Europe and the world. In this book, Mike Seal and Pete Harris draw on the findings of a two-year European research project--in which peer researchers spoke to young people--to examine different responses to youth violence. Developing a unique analytical framework that combines elements of critical theory, psychosocial criminology, and applied existential philosophy, the authors present a new model for responding meaningfully and effectively to these issues at personal/psychological, community/cultural, and structural/symbolic levels. Through a series of case studies, Seal and Harris show how these approaches have been applied in different practice settings. Essential reading in the fields of youth and community work, social work, criminology, youth justice, and youth studies, this book will stimulate critical new thinking and encourage reflective and theoretically informed responses to addressing youth violence in practice.

This topical, accessibly written book moves beyond established critiques to outline a model of positive youth justice: Children First, Offenders Second. Already in use in Wales, the proposed model promotes child-friendly, diversionary, inclusive, engaging, promotional practice and legitimate partnership between children and adults which can serve as a blueprint for other local authorities and countries. Setting out a progressive, positive and principled model of youth justice, the book will appeal to academics, students, practitioners and policy makers seeking to improve working practices and outcomes and will make an important contribution to the debate on youth justice policy.

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.

A society’s response to youth crime reveals much about its broader cultural values, social circumstances, and political affairs. This book examines reactions and policy responses to youth delinquency and crime in Hong Kong during its colonial and post-colonial periods, and in doing so, underscores the history of Hong Kong itself and its present-day circumstances. Exploring how officials have responded to youth crime in Hong Kong over time, this book tracks the emergence of a penal elitist mode of governance, highlighting concerns not only about young people’s behavior but the need for officials to establish state authority and promote citizen identification. In turn, it reveals an alternative to the ‘usual story’ about youth crime found in many western regions and provides an opportunity to begin to develop a comparative criminology. The book examines the emergence of the ‘disciplinary welfare’ tariff during the 1970s, debates and policy changes related to the minimum age of criminal responsibility and youth sex crimes, and inaction regarding the introduction of restorative justice initiatives in the post-colonial era. It also addresses the power of ‘Post-80s’ youth to protest and challenge government policies, which directly combat contemporary fears regarding the ‘mainlandization’ of Hong Kong. Drawing on archival sources, official reports and interviews with key stakeholders in the juvenile justice system, Responding to Youth Crime in Hong Kong will appeal to students and scholars interested in Chinese society, criminology, social work, sociology and youth studies.