The thesis investigates whether the treatment by the criminal justice system of children who kill in England, starting with the commencement of the police investigation into their crime and ending with the completion of their trial and sentencing processes, has differed over time and if so, the reasons for these differences. It does so by placing a special focus on the adoption of four different concepts of the child, which it develops using the extensive literature available. It carries out its analysis through the exploration of five case studies of children who killed between 1800 and 2000, including the notorious 1993 case of the killing of James Bulger. The thesis draws associations between the approach of different elements of the criminal justice system towards these children and the four concepts of the child and examines their movement over time. It also conducts a comparative analysis with the approaches of the press, public reaction and politicians towards these children, by drawing equivalent associations and observing how they evolve over time. Simultaneously, it observes particular features of the different fields in order to determine their influence over those associations. The thesis concludes that the treatment of these children by the criminal justice system was associated with the various concepts of the child to different degrees over time, though the changes and movements have been to a large extent gradual, unemotional and informed. It also argues that during the late 20th century the approaches of the press, politicians and the public became more erratic and emotional and hence came to deviate substantially from the approach of the criminal justice system. The politicisation of crime, the intense competitiveness of the press and the growing involvement and reactions of the public in matters of juvenile crime, which constituted changes in the three fields during the 1990s, are believed to be instrumental in this divergence. Its findings constitute a platform on which a framework for reform of the treatment within the criminal justice system of children who kill can be founded in the future.

Young people who offend (YPwO) appear stuck in a cycle of adverse experiences, low social support and emotional skill deficits, yet their needs have not been extensively researched. The current study aimed to develop an understanding of alexithymia, the ability to recognise others’ emotions and perceived social support in YPwO and to explore the relationships between these variables. Fifty YPwO were recruited through three Youth Offending Teams and fifty age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status and academically-matched young people without a known offending history were recruited from a college and youth service in the same geographical area. All participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Toronto Alexithymia scale, a Facial Emotion Recognition Task, a Verbal Emotional Prosody Recognition Task and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Statistical analyses failed to show that, relative to the control group, YPwO had higher levels of alexithymia, lower levels of perceived social support or lower ability to recognise others’ emotions. However, relative to the control group, YPwO did show significantly lower ability to recognise fear through verbal prosody. Of interest, children who had been ‘looked after’, rather than those with offending status in isolation, were found to show significant difficulties in identifying and describing feelings, ability to recognise others’ emotions and reported lower levels of perceived social support, particularly from family. In addition, significant correlations were found between i) alexithymia and perceived social support, ii) the ability to recognise others’ emotions and perceived social support, and iii) the ability to recognise emotions from facial expressions and the ability to recognise emotions through verbal prosody. The current study supports the view that offending behaviour is the result of a complex interplay of individual, developmental, and social factors. Theoretical and clinical implications of the study findings are discussed and potential areas for future research are suggested.

In 2001 the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP) was introduced by the Youth Justice Board. It was politically drafted to attend to New Labour’s desire to be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. ISSP provided the ubiquitous ‘persistent young offender’ with a range of community-based resources and espoused a plethora of often contradictory theoretical and practice aims. Employing a cross-methodological framework this study has sought to understand the long-term impact of intensive supervision on the lives of (formerly) serious and persistent young offenders as they grow up. Using a large cohort of 1789 ISSP cases and 704 comparison cases it has built up a longitudinal picture of which young people persisted with or desisted from crime, together with measures of the nature of their subsequent offending and exposure to criminal sanctions. While the inevitable result of ‘no difference’ emerges, the role of more sophisticated statistical analyses and longitudinal models is advised to answer a broader set of substantive questions. In-depth life-history interviews also gave voice to the young people themselves. How did they relate to the melange of penal discourses? Did they want to be rehabilitated? What did offending represent to them in their everyday lives? The results suggest that a childhood of persistent offending was often experienced as wild flight of hedonism and capital advantage. However, frequently and swiftly, it translated into a complex and demoralising poverty trap in early adulthood. Despite the epistemological, theoretical and logistical gaps between quantitative and qualitative methods, their combination has the potential to address the sort of ‘what works’ questions but also to the wider intellectual terrain of the impact of punishment on offender’s subjectivities and the broader position of young offenders in society.

Le présent travail a pour objectif de comprendre les modes de gouvernement des jeunes délinquants spécifiques aux réponses pénales dites « en milieu ouvert ». Cette problématique a été abordée à travers l’analyse d’un dispositif institutionnel particulier, la mesure de Liberté Assistée (Liberdade Assistida), telle qu’elle est mise en œuvre dans deux métropoles brésiliennes (Rio de Janeiro et Belo Horizonte). L’enquête a pris pour objet les pratiques des professionnels en situation, leur inscription dans un univers urbain et institutionnel plus large, ainsi que les interactions avec les jeunes soumis à la mesure de Liberté Assistée. Les analyses montrent que ce type de dispositif de gouvernement repose sur des instruments de normalisation et de contrôle spécifiques, condensés au sein des échanges verbaux entre jeunes et professionnels (incitations à la réflexivité, exigences de justification et menaces). La conformité des jeunes aux attentes institutionnelles dépend donc essentiellement de leur capacité à produire un discours intelligible et cohérent aux yeux de l’institution. La mesure de Liberté Assistée déploie par ailleurs une surveillance discontinue, souvent déléguée à d’autres acteurs et institutions, voire aux jeunes eux-mêmes, qui se voient alors enjoints à faire preuve d’autocontrôle au quotidien. Nos analyses soulignent enfin le caractère individualisé et négociable du contrôle exercé par la mesure : les jeunes qui répondent aux attentes institutionnelles sont en effet soumis à des formes de contrôle plus continues – mais aussi plus négociées – tandis que les jeunes récalcitrants se voient soumis à un contrôle plus ponctuel mais aussi plus vertical et répressif. / This research aims to understand the features of the government of juvenile delinquency specific to non-custodial sentences. Our work tackles these questions through the analysis of a particular institution, the Assisted Freedom program (Liberdade Assistida), in two different Brazilian cities (Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte). The investigation focuses on the professional practices, how they take place in a broader urban and institutional context, and the interactions with the young offenders submitted to the program. Our analysis shows that this kind of institutional apparatus rests upon specific instruments of normalization and control, enacted in the verbal interactions between youths and professionals (promotion of reflexivity, demands of justification, threats). The youths’ compliance with institutional expectations therefore depends on their ability to produce an understandable and coherent discourse in the eyes of the institution. Moreover, surveillance in the Assisted Freedom program is discontinuous, often delegated to other actors and institutions and to the young offenders themselves, who are required to exercise self-control in their daily lives. Lastly, our analysis shows that control is individualized and negotiable: control over the youths who meet institutional expectations is more continuous, but also more negotiable, while the most recalcitrant young people will experience more sporadic but also more repressive forms of control.

Social concern about deviant, delinquent and disorderly behaviour has a long history in the UK. Propelled by the New Labour government’s Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the ‘antisocial behaviour agenda’ reframed the problem and constructed a punitive solution (Newburn, 2007). While in recent years Scottish policy has diverged from the punitive rhetoric established in Westminster, the ‘antisocial’ individual continues to be conceptualised as part of a disruptive minority that fails to conform to societal norms of behaviour. This antisocial minority has, invariably, come to be associated with young people and, in particular, young people from ‘disadvantaged’ socio-economic circumstances. While there is a growing body of empirical research on this topic, most has focused on young people’s relationship to antisocial behaviour in terms of their role as victim or as perpetrator. Alternatively, studies have evaluated how young people experience specific policy interventions. The principal aim of this doctoral research is to shift away from attempting to explain why young people become involved in antisocial behaviour and instead explore the diverse ways they define, experience and relate to it. Its gaze, therefore, is upon young people’s everyday interactions with antisocial behaviour and, in so doing, seeks to produce a more rounded understanding of young lives. The research was based within ‘Robbiestoun’ (a pseudonym): a predominantly social housing estate in the suburbs of a Scottish city and, as such, was able to situate young people’s experiences of antisocial behaviour alongside their experiences of living in a ‘disadvantaged’ socio-economic place. It employed participatory ethnographic methods to engage with a range of young people across multiple research sites. The empirical analysis found that understandings of what is, and is not, normal behaviour were fundamental to young people’s relationship with the antisocial. Social and physical disorder was a regular occurrence, and for many, it was an established, even normal, part of everyday life. Nonetheless, young people were aware of external categorisations of Robbiestoun and its residents as ‘abnormal’, an identity which most young people resisted and challenged. Young people’s behaviour in public spaces was similarly contested. Professionals (and many adults) had clear ideas about what constituted normal, social behaviour and these frequently conflicted with those held by young people. Such conflict was most evident for those young people actively engaged in criminal and antisocial acts. Not only was antisocial was a label these groups identified with, but they also rationalised their involvement in antisocial behaviour as an expected, and indeed necessary, part of growing up in Robbiestoun. The research revealed that young people utilised a range of strategies, techniques and rationales which enabled them to navigate the area’s ‘abnormal’ identity and ‘get on’ with ‘normal’ life. Such tactics were not universal across Robbiestoun, but rather varied according to young people’s own behavioural standards and social norms. The research concludes by arguing that the different relationships young people have to antisocial behaviour were, in fact, expressions of economic inequality, poverty and material disadvantage. This is an important point, but one not adequately addressed by policy makers. Rather than pursuing policy objectives based on the pursuit of ‘correct’ social values and norms, it is contended that more attention must be given the role of local norms in shaping young people’s definitions of, and relationships to, antisocial behaviour. Only then can a more rounded understanding of everyday lives in a disadvantaged place be developed and, in turn, workable solutions be found and delivered.

This thesis investigates the development of a practice-based approach to youth justice – the Whole System Approach (WSA) in Scotland. Introduced nationally in 2011, the WSA aims to improve long-term outcomes for children and young people in the youth justice system by diverting them away from statutory measures. This PhD focuses on two key strands of the WSA which deal with low to mid-level level offending: Early and Effective Intervention and Diversion from Prosecution. After a punitive period in Scottish youth justice policy in the early 2000s, the WSA signalled a return to welfarist principles based on multi-agency working between statutory and non-statutory organisations. A mixed method case study of the implementation of the approach in one local authority was conducted to provide an in-depth account of the development of Early and Effective Intervention and Diversion from Prosecution; considering these within the local context. Interviews with practitioners involved in these processes on the ground revealed intricacies of the daily implementation of the WSA in practice. Interviews with policy actors enabled perspectives on the national implementation of the WSA particularly around variations in national practice and long-term sustainability. Triangulating referral data on a sample of 65 cases of children and young people alongside interviews provides an illustrative case study of these processes and the use of restorative justice as a disposal in the case study area. Locating this research within an existing body of literature on street-level bureaucracy and criminal justice decision-making, this thesis provides a new perspective on youth justice multi-agency implementation and decision-making. This research found that the translation of the WSA into practice was premised on holistic operational understandings. This thesis provides a unique case study on the implications of increased local autonomy in youth justice within the context of central-local governance reform as well as a narrative of how youth justice practice evolved in a changing political, structural and organisational context. The new multi-agency modes of working under the WSA have led to the sharing of expertise in decision-making, as well as an increase in disposals available to gatekeepers, but have ultimately retained autonomy for decision-making within key youth justice organisations. For 16 and 17-year-olds in transition from the youth to adult system, this thesis sheds light on perceptions of this group and how decision-making rests on their responsibilisation, leaving this group very much at the interface of, and overlapping, two systems. Overall, this thesis has several policy and practice implications, which may serve to take deliberations about youth justice in Scotland forward.

As a growing field of research, neuroscience receives more and more attention from lay people as well as professionals in various contexts. This ESRC funded dissertation investigates how neuroscientific research findings influence juvenile justice practice in Scotland. The study concentrates on the aspect of aggressive behaviour in children and young people. The thesis begins by reviewing juvenile justice practice in Scotland. This is followed by an overview of key neuroscientific research findings possibly relevant for juvenile justice practice. Further context for this dissertation is provided by a review of the theoretical frameworks for understanding how practitioners use knowledge with particular reference to knowledge production and transdisciplinarity in social work. The thesis then moves on to an empirical analysis, based on a case study approach employing qualitivative data collection methods in addition to a discourse analysis of relevant neuroscientific research publications. The empirical chapters explore different aspects and perspectives of the process, by which neuroscientific research findings move from a scientific paper to juvenile justice practice. The conceptualisation of aggressive behaviour in the different social worlds of juvenile justice practice and in neuroscientific research publications is examined, and aggressive behaviour is identified as a boundary object that spans the analysed social worlds. The perspective of training providers and practitioners on the utilised neuroscientific knowledge is explored. The conceptualisation of neuroscience is then placed in the context of the day-­‐‑to-­‐‑day realities of juvenile justice practice, with the aim of understanding how this knowledge potentially changes practitioners’ perspectives towards service users. The knowledge utilisation process is investigated, with focus on the different actors and their roles in a context of transdisciplinarity in juvenile justice practice. In conclusion, the thesis provides recommendations for knowledge providers, practitioners, policymakers and academics by considering ways of improving a critical perspective on knowledge from other disciplines; encouraging training providers and practitioners to become more active participants in this knowledge utilisation process; and by including the need for working environments where active knowledge utilisation is integrated in the work place.

Child protection has progressively developed into a significant priority for the UAE culminating in a range of strategies and measures to protect vulnerable children and at-risk groups. In recent years the UAE has formed a national Committee for Child Protection, acceded to key international conventions protecting the human rights of children, and legislated for new police powers to enhance child protection. This study addresses the lack of research in the Gulf and UAE on the relationship between relevant risk factors and juvenile delinquency. It is envisaged that identifying core needs of those exposed to early childhood trauma may support the design of appropriate policies on child protection. The study aimed to present a significant theoretical insight on how multiple risk factors and/or negative exposure predict or contribute to offending and re-offending behaviour. The research undertook a qualitative mixed methods approach to investigate the association between childhood risk factors (early child-parent separation, neglect and abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), trauma of sexual abuse, maternal deprivation and family discord) and juvenile delinquency. Data collection was based on four samples of juvenile delinquents remanded in various rehabilitation care centres in the UAE. Findings indicate that in relation to maltreatment 46.7% of juvenile delinquents (n=107) had experienced physical abuse by older adults. A further 20.6% had been subjected to sexual or attempted sexual abuse and 31.8% experienced familial neglect in relation to care. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were acutely manifested among 36.5% of the sample (n=114) with an additional 14.8% suffering chronic PTSD reactions. Delayed PTSD onset was suffered by 5.2% of the sample while 43.5% were found to be PTSD negative. In relation to parental attachment, juvenile delinquents (n=111) indicated a marginally stronger attachment to their mother than to their father. An examination of the link and legacy impacts of early physical and sexual abuse on behaviour, attitudes and feelings of young offenders (n=45) found that 44.44% had experienced sexual abuse in childhood in the majority of cases by familiar adults. These experiences incurred residual feelings of sadness, shame, anger and distrust of others. Most of these victims further demonstrate low self-esteem and suffer anxiety and nightmares in addition to other trauma reactions such as violent behaviour, stealing and use of drugs.

This thesis examines risk and protective factors associated with youth offending and how these have been applied to legislation, prevention and intervention. The first chapter reviews current trends in youth offending and approaches to treatment and interventions with young offenders. The second chapter reviews current literature on risk and protective factors to youth offending and how this has radically changed the Youth Justice System. The risk and protective factors paradigm is then applied to an empirical research study in the third chapter. Findings from the empirical research study suggest that completers and non-completers of a community based program differ in terms of their anger levels and their current educational status. The fourth chapter applies the risk and protective factors paradigm to a qualitative case study in order to demonstrate the intrinsic relationship between risk and protective factors and the applicability of the paradigm to interventions. Chapter five presents a critique of the Children’s Nowicki-Strickland Internal External (CNSIE) locus of control scale, as internal locus of control has been identified as protective factor to youth offending. However, findings from the empirical study and case study suggests that locus of control is not a protective factor for the current sample. The main conclusion derived from the thesis is identification of risk and protective factors associated with youth offending is relatively simple. However applying and implementing protective factors in intervention is much more difficult in reality. This has implications for future initiatives aimed at preventing youth offending.

Offending in people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) though rare requires specialist knowledge of the risk factors involved, to adapt interventions effectively. A review of the somewhat sparse literature suggests that empathy impairments and social skills deficits are frequently cited risk factors, indicating that attachment security may be a mediating factor. Due to ‘common’ impairments in empathising abilities, offenders with ASD and Psychopathic Disorder are sometimes thought of similarly, but evidence suggests they show differing cognitive and affective empathy deficits (Blair, 2010). The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI: Davis, 1983) was used to measure cognitive and affective empathy in this study. A secure website was designed and created to access participants and collect data over the Internet. Regression analyses were carried out to investigate how the empathy levels and attachment styles varied with psychopathic and autistic traits in a community sample of 46 male and 34 female participants, of whom 13 had a diagnosis of an ASD and 17 had committed offences. These results are discussed with regard to implications for risk and risk management in offenders with ASD.