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This review is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and it explores how contextual factors influence the effectiveness of preventative interventions on youth reoffending in England and Wales. The effectiveness of preventative youth justice interventions can be limited by overlooking and marginalising important contextual influences, such as socio-structural, situational and relational factors. Realist synthesis methods are sensitive to context and therefore may reveal that interventions work for some young people and not others. This project aims to give insight into ‘what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects, and how?’.

Media stories of violent young offenders, while rare events, “signal” to the public that youth crime is on the rise and worse, that today’s youth are capable of horrific crimes. As a result, both the public and politicians call for change – legislation and the courts need to toughen up on youths. The present study, guided by penal populism and focal concerns theory, fills a gap in the literature by examining sentencing decisions of young offenders convicted of violent offences in Ontario, Canada. Three research questions were asked. First, drawing on penal populism is there evidence in Canada, particularly Ontario, of a penal populist turn? Are judges taking a more punitive stance in sentencing young offenders convicted of sexual assault and physical assault? Second, drawing on focal concerns theory, do sentencing decisions reflect an offender’s level of blameworthiness and the need for protection of the public? Can extralegal factors, such as age and gender, explain disparities in sentencing? Third, do the sentencing rationales provided by judges vary within and across offence type? To answer these questions, a sample of sentencing decisions was analyzed to uncover quantitative and qualitative trends. The findings provide mixed support for penal populism and limited support for focal concerns theory. One prominent finding is that the courts appear to take a more punitive stance towards physical assault offenders regardless of their rehabilitative prospects than the sexual assault offenders. Three explanations are proposed for this difference. First, it appears that judges believe that physical assault offenders are better rehabilitated with a custodial sentence, while rehabilitation for sexual assault offenders is best achieved through non-custodial sentences. Second, a disproportionate number of physical assaults were committed against strangers whereas sexual assaults were disproportionately committed against people known to the offender; the courts may view the former offenders as a greater threat to the community. Lastly, there may be a lag between legislative changes and changes in sentencing patterns, as a result of judicial inertia. Although this sample is not representative, there is evidence of increased use of custody within these cases that become precedents for future sentencing decisions. As a result, judicial precedence may, in the future, result in harsher sentences for young offenders convicted of physical assault.

In the age of risk society, the word “crime” is gaining more and more importance. Today’s rapid economic development, dynamic and rather controversial technological processes, which describe the current global environment, call for a more active response to crime as one of the top priorities. In recent years, criminal offences committed by young people, especially minors, are a priority issue for law enforcement authorities, society and the state. The term “youth crime” in criminology has been introduced relatively recently. This topic has been little studied in Latvia. The paper provides an insight into the criminological scope of youth crime. The author would like to launch a discussion on the criminological study prospect of youth crime in Latvia.The aim of the paper is to describe the phenomenon of youth crime by analysing the theoretical and practical aspects. The topicality of the study of the youth crimes’ criminological aspect is determined by the prevalence of this type of crime and the problems in identifying and prevention of it. Such tasks of the study are defined: to describe the criminological content of youth crime and to provide the criminological classification of a subject; to analyse its causes and circumstances contributing to it; to discover the content of criminological prevention. The study is based on the opinions and conclusions of scientists and different documents. Several methods of general scientific research and specific methods are used in the paper: monographic and constructive approaches, logical interpretation, statistical methods and the method of legal norms’ interpretation.The author concludes that youth crime is a complex, dynamic criminological phenomenon with certain regularities, which determine its formation and existence. The author acknowledges that criminological importance is got by early prevention measures, especially for young people whose behaviour manifests itself in a criminal inclination or takes place in a hostile or criminal environment.

Current research examining services for male and female youth in the criminal justice system has focused primarily on males and then generalizes findings to reflect the needs of females. However, more recent literature has identified critical differences between males and females involved in the youth criminal justice system, recognizing that females have unique concerns that need to be reflected in services and interventions. This study examined 277 high-risk, violent and chronic offending youth referred to an urban-based court clinic between the years 2010-2015. The youths' files contained information related to psychological functioning, family history, and information related to outside agencies regarding pathways and risk factors leading to antisocial behaviour. This study provides an in-depth understanding of gender differences in a current court clinic sample of youth relating to the potential barriers to accessing services.

This research explores different representations of youth crime in Canada from a feminist criminological and social constructionist perspective. Using a mixed-methods approach that draws upon historical scholarly works, official governmental crime and court statistics, and national Canadian newspapers, I investigate statistical and media representations of youth crime in Canada. Official crime and court statistics were analyzed to identify trends in youth crime and how they vary by gender and legislative changes. I provide an historical overview of changing definitions of youth, crime and delinquency, and consider how these combined with changing norms regarding morality to shape youth crime legislation in Canada from the late 18th century to the current era. I also determined if violence among female youth has been increasing between 1991/92 and 2011/12. Previous research has been divided. This analysis finds that youth crime is not increasing, and that boys’ crime continues to outpace girls’ crime. Neither girls’ violence, nor the severity of their crimes, are increasing, with the exception of criminal harassment and uttering threats. These increases possibly reflect changing attitudes towards bullying that have resulted in changes in charging and conviction patterns. These findings highlight how crime trends have shaped legislative outcomes, and how legislative change, in turn, shapes crime trends. Next, I explore whether news reports on youth crime closely follow crime and court rates, or if they reflect a moral panic about youth crime, as the literature suggests. Unexpectedly, media accounts do correlate with violent crime trends, numerically, although the content of these articles often runs counter to these trends. Media accounts of boys’ and girls’ criminal activity is strongly shaped by gender, as well as by class, race, and age, and there is evidence of moral panics in news reporting. Moral panics pertaining to girls’ involvement in crime reflect societal tension regarding changing gender norms, reflecting a ‘feminist backlash.’ Media, crime statistics, and youth legislation can shape public opinion and influence the future treatment of youth in the criminal justice system in ways that are discriminatory. This research aims to counter ageist, sexist, racist, and classist beliefs about youth crime.

Based on findings from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, this article challenges the evidence-base which policy-makers have drawn on to justify the evolving models of youth justice across the UK (both in Scotland and England/Wales). It argues that to deliver justice, systems need to address four key facts about youth crime: serious offending is linked to a broad range of vulnerabilities and social adversity; early identification of at-risk children is not an exact science and runs the risk of labelling and stigmatizing; pathways out of offending are facilitated or impeded by critical moments in the early teenage years, in particular school exclusion; and diversionary strategies facilitate the desistance process.The article concludes that the Scottish system should be better placed than most other western systems to deliver justice for children (due to its founding commitment to decriminalization and destigmatization). However, as currently implemented, it appears to be failing many young people.

This is an evaluation report on the Garda Special Projects, a locally based scheme of youth crime prevention initiatives in urban areas in Ireland. The report outlines key findings from a mixed method research study including case studies in five local areas. The report concludes that the development of the initiatives has been ad hoc and makes recommendations on the need for guidelines and a policy framework to underpin the strategic direction of the iniatives.

This thesis examines delinquency professionals’ perceptions and explanations of young male lower working class assaultive violence. Eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted with the delinquency professionals. These were then analyzed within the theoretical frameworks of Royce (2009), Garland (2001), Messerschmidt (1993, 2000) and Cohen (1985). The analysis of the data found the delinquency professionals’ perceptions and explanations of young male lower working class assaultive violence to be individualistic and pathological. Specifically, the delinquency professionals maintain that young male lower working class assaultive violence may be attributed to a “culture of the poor” which requires young men to enact violent masculinities, consists of poor family structure and provides a social learning environment conducive to delinquency. These perspectives ignore the macro structural disparities faced by young lower class males (Royce 2009; Messerschmidt 2000). Rather, they align with the neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologies present in many post modern Western industrialized nations (Garland 2001). Through ideological semblance it becomes clear that delinquency professionals are influenced by the culture of control, serve as an extension to the culture of control and adopt the individualistic pathological ideology of the culture of control. With the proliferation and expansion of this “professional class” it is important to have a better understanding of how delinquency professionals perceive young male lower working class assaultive violence and their role in the social control system.DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1997458