Juvenile offenders

Policy development and implementation has a pivotal role in the youth justice system, with a profound impact upon professionals and the children they work with. Presenting original research on a variety of stakeholder policy-makers in England and Wales, this book is key reading for researchers and practitioners responding to youth offending.

‘Desistance’ - understanding how people move away from offending – has become a significant policy focus in recent years, with desistance thinking transplanted from the adult to the youth justice system in England and Wales. This book is the first to critique this approach to justice-involved children.

Whereas crime more generally has fallen over the last 20 years, levels of serious youth violence remain high. This book explores the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and serious youth violence and advocates for a more psychosocial approach to trauma-informed policy and practice within the youth justice system.

With fascinating ethnographic and interview data, James Alexander explores the disappearance of localised relationships and the rise in youth violence in a South London housing estate. Evaluating the effectiveness of youth work programmes, he considers the impact of the gradual move from neighbourly to professional support for young people.

Sports-based crime prevention programmes are increasingly popular world-wide but until now there has been very little research on their effectiveness. The authors analyse successful Positive Youth Development practices and their effectiveness in decreasing the risk of criminal involvement, giving recommendations for future policy and practice.

Youth violence dominates headlines and politicians’ attention and many organisations invest considerable resources in an attempt to reduce it. This book examines how inequality and social harms drive such violence and highlights key future goals for policymakers, researchers and practitioners.

Qasim gained unique first-hand insight into the multifaceted lives of a group of young British male Muslims who offend after spending 4 years studying them. He unwraps their lives, explores their identities and explains what role religion and Pakistani culture play in their criminal behaviour.

This book challenges current thinking about youth violence and gangs, and their racialisation by the media and the police. It highlights how the street gang label is unfairly linked to Black (and urban) youth street-based lifestyles/cultures and friendship groups.

Drawing on the findings of a two-year European research project, this book presents a new model for responding meaningfully and effectively the 'problem' of how to respond to violence involving young people that continues to challenge youth workers and policy makers.

Offers a challenging interpretation of the ways in which young people’s non-participation is becoming marginalised and criminalised. It re-examines the causes and consequences of youth unemployment in and beyond the UK from an unusually wide range of social science disciplines and perspectives.

This topical book outlines a model of positive youth justice: Children First, Offenders Second (CFOS), which promotes child-friendly, diversionary, inclusionary, engaging, promotional practice and legitimate partnership between children and adults to serve as a blueprint for other local authorities and countries.

This engaging book presents the shocking truth about the lives and deaths of children in custody. Drawing on human rights legislation, it outlines the harsh realities of penal child custody. The issues are explored through the lens of protection, not punishment, and the author finds there can be only one conclusion: child prisons must close.