Book Review: Juvenile Justice: The Essentials
| Published date | 01 December 2011 |
| Author | Dawn Stephen |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225411420534a |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
294 Youth Justice 11(3)
While there is a degree of overlap and repetition across the various chapters in this
edited collection, it provides interesting and engaging historical and contemporary insights
into the development of Scottish youth justice. Moreover, with the Criminal Justice and
Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 receiving Royal assent in August 2010 the analysis pre-
sented will prove an important and timely resource which will enable academics, students
and the policy community to critically engage with the emergent Scottish youth justice
landscape.
R Lawrence and M Hesse, Juvenile Justice: The Essentials, Thousand Oaks, Sage, 2010,
£24 Pb, ISBN 978-1-41297-012-9.
Reviewed by: Dr Dawn Stephen, School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, UK.
This is an impressive introductory textbook, not merely for the clear, concise and yet
comprehensive explanations of the Juvenile Justice System in the USA, but for the highly
student-friendly manner in which the material is presented. The text is complemented by
online instructor resources whilst helpful case studies, tables, examples from case law,
and end of chapter summaries, key terms and discussion questions encourage students to
reflect on their learning. Moreover, Lawrence and Hesse adopt a most welcome approach
in stating, as they do in the preface, their determination to privilege juvenile justice rather
than delinquency, and in opening Chapter 1 with vital, yet often forgotten, accounts of the
extent to which children and young people are themselves victims, not perpetrators, of
crime. The authors’ apparent commitment to presenting such a fair, reliable and balanced
appraisal is returned to time and again in the empathic critical commentary presented
throughout the book.
Readers outside the USA might have concerns about the relevance of the subject matter
to their own states’ systems of youth justice, but there are three chapters of immediate
significance: the two main theoretical chapters (Chapters 3 and 4) and the ‘Correlates and
causes of delinquency’ examined in Chapter 5. Whilst I hold reservations about the deter-
minism inherent in the term ‘causes’, these chapters provide students with a strong over-
view of theoretical and contextual understandings, supported by insightful critical
commentary. Furthermore, the concluding chapter encourages further reflection and
thence prognostication on the likely future direction of juvenile justice in straitened times.
The information-rich chapters on the organization and workings of specific parts of the
juvenile justice system in the USA (Chapters 6−13) cover the police, due process and
rights, the courts, correctional institutions, community corrections and restorative justice.
Together they offer firm groundings for the development of students’ knowledge.
Without denying the positive developments in recent years in terms of the nature of
penal detention, community sentences and restorative justice measures (Chapters 11−13)
which give grounds for some measured optimism, the textbook has a more profound
relevance in mapping the shift from welfare-inspired means of dealing with problem
youth to the ‘get tough’ policies (pp. 21−3) and practices, experienced on both sides of
the Atlantic:
To continue reading
Request your trial