John Muncie

The globalization of crime control—the case of youth and juvenile justice Neo-liberalism, policy convergence and international conventions

The concept of globalization has gradually permeated criminology, but more so as applied to transnational organized crime, international terrorism and policing than in addressing processes of criminal justice reform. Based on a wide range of bibliographic and web resources, this article assesses the extent to which a combination of neo-liberal assaults on the social logics of the welfare state and public provision, widespread experimentation with restorative justice and the prospect of rehabilitation through mediation and widely ratified international directives, epitomized by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have now made it possible to talk of a global juvenile/youth justice. Conversely it also reflects on how persistent national and local divergences, together with the contradictions of contemporary reform, may preclude any aspiration for the delivery of a universal and consensual product

Governing young people: Coherence and contradiction in contemporary youth justice

This article explores the burgeoning literature on modes and layers of governance and applies it to the complex of contemporary youth justice reform. Globalized neo-liberal processes of responsibilization and risk management coupled with traditional neo-conservative authoritarian strategies have dominated the political landscape. However, they also have to work alongside or within ‘new’ conceptions of social inclusion, partnership, restoration and moralization. These apparently contradictory strategies open up the possibility of multiple localized translations rather than an often assumed dominance of a uniform ‘culture of control’. The ensuing hybridity also suggests that any coherence within contemporary youth justice relies on continual negotiations between opposing, yet overlapping, discursive practices.

Institutionalized intolerance: youth justice and the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act

After a year of frenetic activity New Labours Crime and Disorder Act slipped quietly into the statute book on the last day before parliaments summer recess in 1998. Heralded as a radical shake up of criminal justice and youth justice, the major provisions of the Act are examined in this article and its likely impact on the treatment of young people is critically assessed. It does so by tracing how far the rhetoric of crime prevention represents a radical new departure or a continuation of the former governments commitment to penal populism. By unearthing the key foundational elements in Labours agenda—authoritarianism, communitarianism, remoralization, managerialism—the article notes the significant presences and absences that are likely to be witnessed in youth justice in England and Wales by the turn of the century.

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

Derived from a more ambitious international youth justice research project, this article aims to critically interrogate the direction of contemporary youth justice policy in England and Wales and the political priorities that underpin it. By rethinking youth justice on the basis of comparative analysis, international human rights and research evidence, we challenge the current policy trajectory and offer an alternative formulation: a youth justice with integrity.

Policy Transfers and ‘What Works’: Some Reflections on Comparative Youth Justice

This article explores the implications for youth justice in England and Wales of borrowing other states’ penal initiatives in the pursuit of a pragmatic ‘what works’ agenda in crime prevention and reducing re-offending. It is argued that whilst the policy transfer of elements of restorative justice from the likes of Australasia and Scotland has the potential to radically rethink current practice its implementation is partial and piecemeal. The dominant recurrent influence remains that of American inspired punitive justice. Meanwhile some important lessons in child protection, diversion and decarceration from Europe are ignored. The adoption of ‘what works’ is highly selective and in itself provides a dubious basis for reform. What superficially appears as a new open-mindedness to learn from academic evaluation and ‘best practice’ world-wide, masks the fundamentally political and ideological nature of contemporary youth justice policy.

Normalized dislocation and new subjectivities in post-16 markets for education and work

This article argues that the prevailing discourses of transitions and of social exclusion are no longer adequate to describe or explain the experiences of a substantial minority of young people. Reporting on a study of 800 16–19-year-olds, it is argued that an extensively diversified market in post-16 options produces instability and dislocation. Some young people are able to normalize these experiences of serial short-life engagements with courses and jobs into emergent new subjectivities, constructed around highly interdependent modes of studentship, employment and consumption. For others (the poorest students, those with special needs, some racialized groups) these subjectivities are not available.

Failure never matters: detention centres and the politics of deterrence

On the lst of October 1988 a landmark was reached in post-war penal policy. Legislation within the Criminal Justice Act of that year officially ended an ’experiment’ with the treatment of young offenders that had lasted exactly 40 years. Detention centre orders, popularly renowned as regimes of short, sharp, shock, were merged with youth custody orders into a single sentence of ’detention in a young offender institution’. Whether this means that the particular regimes of short, sharp, shock, based on military drill and strict discipline, have been phased out in all institutions is debatable, but their foreclosure, at least in name, revealed the government’s acknowledgement that the ’experiment’ had come to an end. It does however, remain possible, for the Prison Service to send young male offenders aged 14 to 21 to custodial institutions tailor-made to deal with those on short sentences. Indeed the Prison Service clearly do not view the move to a combined sentence as earmarking a fundamental change in regimes. A ’brisk induction period’ remains a key element particularly for those on sentences of four months or

The Beatles and the Spectacle of Youth

The Beatles have long been viewed as one of the key icons — perhaps the key icon — of the 1960s. Between the release of ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962 and their disbanding in 1970, they produced more than 200 songs and sold more than 200 million records. Their early appearances provoked unprecedented scenes of mass hysteria. The group whose popularity was to be variously gauged as greater than that of Elvis Presley or Jesus Christ are widely acclaimed as one of the most significant forces in the history of popular music, as being a symbol for teenagers worldwide and for revolutionizing British pop culture. Thirty years on, we routinely find their albums appearing in lists of the greatest records of all time (usually Revolver, Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), and they are widely regarded as a key reference point for the emergence of Britpop in the mid-1990s.

Reassessing Competing Paradigms in Criminological Theory

The publication of The New Criminology in 1973 remains a watershed in theoretical criminology. Not only is it widely assumed to have launched an oppositional, radical and critical paradigm onto the criminological landscape, but it also opened up questions regarding the role that criminologists could be expected to play in the broader realm of political activism. In its own words, a criminology not committed to ‘the abolition of inequalities of wealth and power’ was bound to be ultimately reducible to the interests of the economially and politically powerful in society (Taylor et al., 1973).

Punishment in the Community: Seven Years On

This article takes the form of a response to the National Centre for Socio-Legal Studies’ evaluation of the Victorian Youth Attendance Order. Referring to previous research which has warned of the dangers of up-tariffing, lack of purpose, custodial jeopardy and the re-offending rates found in similar high-tariff community orders in England and elsewhere, it is noted that whilst by some criteria such orders may be considered a ‘success’, their place in the sentencing hierarchy and their vulnerability to political exigencies remain key matters of concern. The article underlines the point (by drawing upon international comparisons) that juvenile justice reform does not simply take place in some depoliticised, managerial or technical realm, but is contingent on broader political agendas and priorities.