NCJ Number
216510
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 45 Issue: 5 Dated: December 2006 Pages: 449-467
Date Published
December 2006
Length
19 pages
Annotation
The political climate in England and Wales has fostered juvenile justice policies and practices that have produced the excessive imprisonment of juveniles and institutional conditions of abuse that parallel those cited by the United Nations Study on Violence Against Children 2005 as damaging to children and youth.
Abstract
Despite statistical data that show youth crime declining in England and Wales, a "get tough" policy has been mounted against delinquent children and youth. One of the primary thrusts of juvenile justice policy in those countries has been to increase the imprisonment of delinquent juveniles, where their management and treatment lacks accountability. This has led to institutional practices that constitute emotional and physical abuse of the juvenile residents. Underlying this abusive management of juvenile offenders is a juvenile justice policy that has simplified the causes of delinquent behavior as rooted in individual responsibility and choice rather than social, economic, and educational disadvantage. This has led to the "demonization" of antisocial and delinquent youth as willfully committed to behavior that harms others. Under this theory of juvenile delinquency, the official response has been punitive incarceration under conditions that demean, harm, and even kill youth processed in the juvenile justice regimes of England and Wales. 81 references