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Young offenders’ views of the criminal justice system or of why young people desist from crime are rarely sought by policy makers and practitioners the world over. This chapter draws on a recent study of young offenders’ and ex-offenders’ views and experiences of desistance from crime undertaken within Japan, and draws comparisons with a similar study undertaken in Scotland. The focus of the chapter is young offenders’ responses to questions as to why and how young people desist from crime. The chapter prioritises their verbatim answers to these questions and, in comparing the responses between Japanese and Scottish young people, it concludes that despite concerns amongst criminologists about crime and desistance having different aetiologies within Eastern and Western cultures, young people in both Japan and Scotland have remarkably similar views. This consistency is perhaps based on young people’s universal status as ‘in transition’ and potentially marginalised as a result, rather than on any country-specific status as ‘young people in trouble’.

Inside the offices, paper-workers produce and combine documents. Their desks are covered with paper: with files, bundles and briefs. And the production goes on. Solicitors dictate notes, secretaries type letters, and the legal clerks compile sets of evidence. It is exactly through these paper-trails that things are set into motion for the day in court. The analysis of courses of mobilisation provides some potentials for a cross comparative perspective. Crucial here is the hypothesis generating inventiveness of the researcher. Beyond case-related story-telling, there is the need to create analytical devices that open up the micro-perspective. The data logs suggested above are just a starting point on the way to formalisation and generalisation. It remains the most challenging task to change from the single-case perspective to a cross-case or even cross-cultural perspective. Tracing mobilisation is by no means a new approach in social science or discourse analysis. Many of the ideas presented here stem from the empirical work done in interactionist ethnography, ethno methodology and Actor Network Theory. Here, I would like to finish with some observations on the significance of this research methodology for socio-legal studies. How can it profit from this perspective? The proposed research design, first of all, implies a critical reflection on socio-legal studies and its dominant research foci. How is it that either talk or text, either the drama in court or the rules of the books occupied sociolegal attention? Does one, in the text-book manner, need to declare the primacy of either oral or written language in legal discourse? The analysis of mobilisation allows one to transcend these debates. Despite the affinities with workplace studies, ethno methodology, and Actor Network Theory, the analysis of mobilisation is not identical to these fields of research. Tracing mobilisation does not directly aim to grasp the social organisation of the law firm, the solicitor’s workplace, or the legal apparatus. It, moreover, focuses neither solely on local events, nor on the institutional talk. But what then does it offer? As I understand it, tracing mobilisation makes accessible representational projects in their socio-material course. The course includes various sites and layers of social praxis such as accumulative file-work, extended correspondence, or relatively self-driven events. This multi-sitedness directs the formation of legal discourse, and the involvement of subjects and objects. As a micro-sociologist, I was firstly interested in how court hearings are interactively accomplished. (text extract)