Rethinking Youth Justice: Comparative Analysis, International Human Rights and Research Evidence

Introduction: Making Sense of Policy and Taking Account of Critique

Youth justice policy analysis is a challenging enterprise not least because the conceptual

thematics and rationales that underpin statutes, policies and system configurations are

subject to constant movement and change and, throughout history, such dynamism has

been heavily influenced, if not determined, by prevailing political exigencies and specific

sectoral interests (Hendrick, 2006). As a consequence, 'youth justice' is temporally and

spatially differentiated, diverse and disparate and it is difficult, if at all possible, to

conceptualize it by appealing to any totalizing policy rationale. In this way:

. . . youth justice is a history of conflict, contradictions, ambiguity and compromise . . . [it] tends

to act on an amalgam of rationales, oscillating around and beyond the caring ethos of social

services and the neo-liberal legalistic ethos of responsibility and punishment.

(Muncie and Hughes, 2002: 1)

In short, youth justice policy discourses and the systems that emanate from them,

comprise fluid sites of contestation and uneasy settlements of competing and/or

intersecting thematics including: welfare; justice; informalism; rights; responsibilities;

restoration; prevention; remoralization and retribution/punishment (Goldson, 2004).

j:yj065560 16-6-2006 p:3 c:0

© 2006 The National Association for Youth Justice. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Downloaded from http://yjj.sagepub.com at University of Liverpool on November 29, 2007 The means by which particular 'themes' are privileged within specific jurisdictions at

given moments in time, and the processes whereby intrinsic tensions are mediated, are

invariably subject to the vagaries of political imperative.

Within this context - as many commentators have observed - the pace of youth

justice reform in England and Wales since the election of the first New Labour

administration in 1997 has been unprecedented. As early as 1993, when the New

Labour motif of 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' was first formulated,

youth justice policy formation has been overtly politicized. Three successive New

Labour governments have applied a 'blizzard of initiatives, crackdowns and targets'

(Neather, 2004: 11); a 'toughening up [of] every aspect of the criminal justice system'

(Blair, 2004: 6) introduced via innumerable policy statements (Jones, 2002) and

ultimately implemented through statute. Far-reaching and deep-cutting reforms have

been underpinned by a substantial corpus of new legislation including: the Crime and

Disorder Act 1998; the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999; the Criminal Justice and

Court Services Act 2000; the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000; the Criminal

Justice and Police Act 2001; the Police Reform Act 2002; the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003;

the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Beyond

an apparent political obsession with being 'tough on crime' and adhering to a 'no more

excuses' agenda