Responding to youth crime - Paul Omaji

This book presents a critique and a vision of the responses of criminal justice agencies to the incidence and prevention of youth crime in selected western countries (UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada). The critique examines the social and legal processes in which young lives have, with such devastating consequences, become entangled with the criminal justice system, trapping them in a life of crime rather than turning them away from it. The vision is about ways in which the criminal justice agencies can become more pro-active partners in society's efforts to guide young people towards becoming happy and productive citizens, focusing less on the exercise of retributive powers and embracing rather the restorative approaches open to them, arguing in particular for a crime prevention role through partnership with community organisations. The book constructs ground rules for high impact partnership where criminal justice agencies dialogue with broader social processes that underpin youth offending and with young people in the search for effective preventive responses; and demonstrates the capacity of criminal justice agencies to become constructive partners with community organisations in preventing youth crime.