Understanding Youth Offending: Risk Factor Reserach, Policy and Practice

This book aims to meet the need for an exploration of youth justice and youth offending which takes account of the origins and contemporary manifestations of risk-focused work with young people. It analyzes the influence of concepts of risk upon policy development in both England and Wales as well as internationally, highlighting tensions between the proponents of risk factor research and methodological and ethical criticisms of the risk factor paradigm. It will be essential reading for anybody wishing to understand risk factor explanation of crime, contemporary youth justice policy and responses to offending behaviour.

Stephen Case is Lecturer in Criminology in the Centre for Criminal Justice and Criminology, Swansea University. Kevin Haines is Reader in Youth Justice and Criminology, and Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice and Criminology Swansea University. Both have written extensively in the field of youth justice.