NCJ Number
211266
Date Published
2005
Length
247 pages
Annotation
This book provides a critical examination of the recent preoccupation among youth with antisocial behavior (ASB).
Abstract
Antisocial behavior (ASB) has rapidly become society’s top crime and disorder problem. However, the questions that have arisen are where the preoccupation with ASB comes from, what fears and concerns drive this preoccupation, what steps the government is taking to address this issue, and what are the consequences. This book argues that what is being witnessed is crime and disorder being reproblematized as antisocial activity which lends a false new integrity to the politics of exclusion, to intolerance, and to inequality. Because of this, an increasingly insecure, divided, and intolerant culture is created. To develop and illustrate this argument, the book draws public perceptions of ABS on the manufactured onset of youthful criminal careers and on the policing of acceptable behavior. The book begins by attempting to trace the emergence of this new discourse on ABS. While tracking the evolution of a discourse on ASB, the emergence of an explicit public and political concern with ASB to the problematization of juvenile delinquency during the Second World War and the immediate period of postwar reconstruction is linked. The book continues by presenting a core argument that ASB management, prevention, and enforcement activities have now become central and indispensable features of contemporary youth justice. It then describes the findings arising from two distinct research projects exploring aspects of youth justice and ASB management. The book concludes with an attempt to draw several themes together through a consideration of the processes of marginalization and criminalization endured by the youth of the lower social classes. It suggests that ASB marks the leading edge of a new strategy of precautionary injustice in British crime and disorder management. References