This chapter examines how youth justice systems are shaped by different ways of thinking about youth, crime, and justice. It first discusses the emergence of the youth justice system in the nineteenth century, and shows how contemporary ideas about the problems of youth and youth offending are both relatively recent constructions and intrinsically connected to broader anxieties about social disorder. It then sets out some of the principles that have dominated the youth justice system at particular moments (welfare, justice, actuarialism, and restoration) and the implications of each for how problems of youth offending and appropriate responses to it are understood. The final sections describe contemporary youth justice in the UK. They focus on the various systems that have emerged in England and Wales, and Scotland; the different contexts which have allowed these approaches to develop; and the pressures now faced by both.
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This chapter describes youth offending and youth justice: that is, offending behaviour committed by children and young people and how they are treated in the Youth Justice System. Society’s assumptions about what it means to be a child and what should be expected of children and young people in terms of their development and behaviour shape its views on and responses to youth offending. The chapter then looks at how the concepts of ‘childhood’ and ‘youth’ have been seen, theorised, and socially constructed over time, before moving on to consider explanations for youth offending and ‘delinquency’. Youth offending has tended to be explained in individualised terms, through developmental and psychological explanations. The chapter also evaluates the main formal responses to youth offending and assesses more progressive, contemporary approaches to youth offending and delivering youth justice.
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This chapter discusses the following issues: the terminology of youth justice; the youth justice organisations; the meaning of parental responsibility; the principal aims of the youth justice system; the early diversion procedures to prevent further offending; the juvenile at the police station; the alternatives to prosecution; and the decision to charge.
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Martin Hannibal and Lisa Mountford
This chapter discusses the following issues: the terminology of youth justice; the youth justice organisations; the meaning of parental responsibility; the principal aims of the youth justice system; the early diversion procedures to prevent further offending; the juvenile at the police station; the alternatives to prosecution; and the decision to charge.
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Steve Uglow
This chapter, which examines the role of the criminal justice system in England and Wales, begins with a short overview of the system as a whole, followed by individual sections on its main components. These include the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the courts, the sentencing and the correctional system, the youth justice system, and the right of appeal.
