Policing Youth: Britain, 1945-70

Policing Youth probes beneath the media sensationalism surrounding youth crime in order to evaluate the workings of juvenile justice and the relationship between young people and practitioners in a key era of social change (1945-70). The work of state representatives – the police, magistrates and probation officers - is mapped alongside models of discipline within families, neighbourhoods, schools and churches as well as the growing commercial sector of retail and leisure. Youth culture is considered alongside the social and moral regulation of everyday life.

The books uses a rich seam of sources – including criminal statistics, court registers, news coverage, contemporary surveys, autobiography, documentary and feature film – to reconstruct the relationship between national policy and local interventions. It offers an important comparison of England and Scotland, whose differences were formalised through separate legal and educational systems, yet pays attention to the significance of region and municipality. It combines quantitative research methods with textual and spatial analysis, highlighting the significance of the material environment (including the post-war rebuilding of cities) in the management of young people’s behaviours. It shows that the period 1945-1970 saw a shift in modes of governance, as an increasing emphasis on young people’s capacity for self-determination was accompanied by more rigorous techniques of spatial restriction, exclusion and delimitation. Individual chapters focus on: police officers, the court system, violence, home and community, sexuality, commercial leisure, and reform.