First Societies of Criminology Key Issues Conference

Description

With Lesley McAra: 'Culture in Practice: The Effectiveness of the Scottish Children's Hearings System' Abstract: According to Muncie, the search for consistently efficient and effective practice in a global context means that the dynamics of local contingencies are often overlooked (Muncie 2003). The youth justice system in Scotland is currently incorporating what works principles into dedicated programmes for child offenders and piloting fast track children's hearings for persistent offenders. These developments have the potential to undermine key elements of the Kilbrandon philosophy on which the children's hearings system was originally based, through their emphasis on specialist social work intervention focused on criminogenic need (rather than generic intervention based on the welfare needs of the child). The aim of this paper is to assess the relative merits of these alternative visions of youth justice at dealing with children and young people who offend. It is based on findings from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a longitudinal study of pathways into and out of offending for a cohort of 4,300 young people who started secondary school in the city of Edinburgh in 1998. A key objective of this study is to examine the impact of interactions with agencies of social control (including the hearings system) on the subsequent behaviour of young people.

Period	May 2004
Event type	Conference
Location	Paris, FranceShow on map