Comparative Youth Justice

London : Sage ( 2006 ) 224pp. £65.00hb ISBN 1-4129-1135-4 £19.99pb ISBN 1-4129-1136-2 Critical comparative analysis of international youth justice is a neglected area. Much of the existing literature tends to focus on descriptive accounts of youth justice procedures and processes across the world, with limited incisive debate. Part of the problem lies in the difficulty in obtaining comparable statistics, as most countries have their own unique rules and methods for compiling data on youth crime and sentencing disposals. However, in recent years, one of the editors of this book has written a series of articles which attempt to develop a comparative analytical framework for the critical appraisal of international youth justice (Muncie 2005, 2006). Comparative Youth Justice: Critical Issues edited by John Muncie and Barry Goldson builds on this framework and substantiates the issues raised with reference to youth justice in twelve countries. The chapters are written by distinguished scholars who have a sound, yet critically reflective, understanding of how youth justice operates in these countries. Muncie and Goldson's concluding chapter draws together the key comparative themes raised in the book, and their implications for the future development of international youth justice. The central theme of the book is to challenge the argument that the globalisation of socio-political and economic policies in advanced industrial societies guided by neo-liberal mentalities and technologies of governance, has led to the convergence of modes of regulating youth crime internationally. Certainly all of the chapters in the book support this argument to some degree, by evidencing how youth justice policies could be seen to be converging across different nation states through such processes as the collapse of welfarism, repenalisation, adulteration and the expansion of youth custody. The implications of the erosion of welfare-based ways of working with young offenders which underpinned youth justice interventions throughout most of the 20th Century and its replacement in the last decade by an obsession with risk-profiling and risk-management is the subject of Cunneen and White's chapter on Australia, and Muncie and Goldson's on England and Wales. In both countries, reflecting international trends, reducing young offenders' risks of reoffending has been linked with correcting narrowly defined criminogenic needs related to individual deficiencies in their attitudes, way of thinking and social skills. Meanwhile, ‘the social contexts of offending are bypassed’ (p.40), as broader structural needs arising from poverty and socio-economic disadvantage, have been set aside as feasible targets of intervention. The retreat from welfare and the individualisation of risk and need have been matched by the repenalisation of youth crime. Fenwick's chapter on youth justice in Japan and Smandych's on Canada, highlight the dynamics of this process. Fenwick shows how youth justice reforms in Japan since 2000, have marked a shift in traditional attitudes towards juvenile offenders, away from an emphasis on informal controls and protecting their welfare, towards a focus on punishment and holding them criminally responsible for their crimes. Smandych traces how successive law and order campaigns in Canada in the 1990s demonised and politicised youth crime, resulting in a hardening of public attitudes and a more punitive judicial response towards young offenders. The repenalisation of youth crime, fuelled by a heightened culture of punitiveness, has been accompanied by an increasing commitment to the responsibilisation of young offenders, by holding them accountable for their offending, which, in turn, has justified the adulteration of youth justice and a renewed enthusiasm for youth custody. The best illustration of the former developments appears in Krisberg's chapter on youth justice in the USA. Here the breakdown of special judicial measures to protect juvenile offenders from the full weight of adult justice has been most strongly marked, signaled by the ease with which juveniles can be transferred to the adult court and subjected to adult sentences. Not surprisingly, the USA has seen a significant rise in the number of juveniles incarcerated in both juvenile and adult correctional facilities. Similarly, repenalisation and responsibilisation has justified a dramatic increase in the use of youth custody in England and Wales, where it enjoys the highest rate in Europe. There is also evidence from several other chapters in the book, that the use of custody has significantly increased in countries such as the Netherlands, renowned for their more progressive approach to youth crime, which suggests that repenalisation has spread on a broad international spectrum. However, despite the compelling evidence in support of the argument that youth justice policies and practices are converging internationally, Muncie and Goldson's book also offers substantive contrary evidence of widespread diversity, arising from distinctive socio-political and cultural norms between and within countries. So, while Put and Walgrave's chapter on Belgium, McAra's on Scotland and uit Beijerse and van Swaaningen's on the Netherlands reaffirm recent global trends towards the repenalisation and adulteration of youth justice, they also highlight how welfare considerations to protect young people's well-being, or ‘best interests’, remain fundamental in some jurisdictions. Similarly, Gendrot's chapter shows that, while authoritarian concerns since the 1990s to protect public security have severely challenged France's welfare orientation to youth justice, as epitomised by the innovative social crime prevention initiatives of the 1980s, the French political culture of republicanism underpinned by notions of solidarity, integration and inclusion, continues to provide some resistance to a wholesale shift to punitive youth justice measures, and ensures that the social context of offending is not totally disregarded. The influence of socio-political and cultural norms on the translation of youth justice into practice is most strongly evident in Lappi-Seppala's chapter on Finland, and Nelken's on Italy. Contrary to trends in other parts of Europe, the politicisation of youth crime as part of a climate of populist punitiveness has never been a feature of youth justice in either country, and, indeed, both have seen substantial reductions in the rate of juvenile incarceration. Lappi-Seppala attributes divergence in Finland to a political culture which values the role of experts in penal policy making, and leaves them free to pursue pragmatically the ideal of diversion and decarceration without interference from populist punitiveness sentiments. In Italy, Nelken argues that the pursuit of diversion and decarceration arises less from deliberate policy choices and more from Italian cultural norms towards familial and community relations which support a more tolerant attitude to youth crime. Culture has also had a significant impact on New Zealand's system of youth justice, which is internationally acclaimed as being based on progressive restorative justice principles. Bradley, Tauri and Walters's chapter, however, questions the extent to which youth justice in New Zealand is truly progressive, arguing that its claims to be culturally sensitive to Maori traditions, and to the achievement of restorative outcomes, are exaggerated. However, the main contribution of this book is not the critical analysis of levels of convergence and diversity of youth justice. Instead, the overriding message to the reader is, as pointed out by Muncie and Goldson in their concluding chapter, that while there is ample evidence that the globalisation of economic and political modes of governance may have supported the convergence of crucial dimensions of youth justice, widespread diversity and resistance remain both between and within nation states. Negative trends towards adulteration, repenalisation and the expansion of youth custody have not been translated into youth justice policy and practice homogenously or uniformly, but have been tempered by socio-political and cultural sensibilities in different countries. This has, in turn, inspired quite distinctive styles of youth justice which defy less positive international movements. International youth justice remains a ‘hybrid’ or ‘complex and contradictory amalgam of the punitive, the responsibilising, the inclusionary, the exclusionary and the protective’ (p.214), which reveals gaps to challenge and change the negative, and opens up the possibilities for more progressive youth justice measures to emerge. This latter process is supported by international guidelines to protect the rights of young people in conflict with the law, such as those incorporated into the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989. Unfortunately, as Muncie and Goldson conclude: ‘implementation has often been half-hearted and piecemeal’ (p.211), and many countries have claimed ‘an adherence to the principle of universal rights whilst simultaneously pursuing policies which exacerbate structural inequalities and punitive institutional regimes’ (p.212). Irrespective of the limitations of international conventions, however, the book provides inspiration to those seeking to promote worldwide best practice in youth justice

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