Book Review: A One Year Reconviction Study of Final Warnings
| Author | Denis Jones |
| DOI | 10.1177/147322540200200207 |
| Published date | 01 August 2002 |
| Date | 01 August 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews
The Editorial Board invites expressions of interest from anyone keen to review books for
Youth Justice. If you are interested please contact the Book Reviews Editor, Denis Jones,
whose contact details can be found on the inside front cover of the journal.
J. Hine and A. Celnick, A One Year Reconviction Study of Final Warnings, Home
Office, November 2001. Available at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/
reconvictstudywarn.pdf.
Reviewed by: Denis Jones, Book Reviews Editor
Using detailed logistic regression analysis in relation to a group of young people given Final
Warnings in the first six months of the pilot Youth Offending Teams (1999), and comparing
them with a group given cautions in 1998, the authors claim that Final Warnings have reduced
likely reconviction rates from 36 per cent (predicted) to 30 per cent (actual). In order to
increase the effectiveness of Final Warning programmes, and limit interventions in respect of
those least likely to re-offend, Hine and Celnick suggest targeting the programmes at those
with previous criminal history, and those assessed as ‘high risk’of truancy and school exclusion,
those with poor relationships with parents and/or poor parental supervision, and those
misusing drugs (but not alcohol or other substances?) and, finally, those with ‘anti-social’peers.
Hine and Celnick present a detailed statistical analysis. In reading this report I was left
questioning whether the authors’apparent acceptance that a Reprimand had replaced ‘previous
caution procedure’, and a Final Warning had replaced a second caution (or a first for a more
serious offence), was actually valid. Moreover, I was left to ponder an alternative scenario. For
example, if the Reprimand has served to replace previous informal police action and/or
no further action (as I suspect), would this make a difference to the means by which we might
understand the logistic analysis?
John Springhall, Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to
Gangsta-Rap 1830–1996, Macmillan Press, Basingstoke, 1998, £16.99,
0-333-66083-8.
Reviewed by: Emma Longstaff, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge
Tracing the production of popular anxieties about ‘amoral’and ‘delinquent’youth, John
Springhall finds clear parallels between historical fears and more current concerns about the
corrupting effects of media sex and violence. Over time, he argues, each wave of technological
and media innovation brings with it a new wave of demonising discourse. From Victorian
panics over penny ‘gaff’theatres and ‘penny dreadful’novels, to censorship of Hollywood
gangster films in the 1930s, and campaigns against horror comics in the 1940s and 1950s,
successive scares have decried the criminogenic consequences of young people’s media
consumption.
Entertaining and erudite, Springhall’s meticulously evidenced account demonstrates how
attacks on the media help to disguise more profound social anxieties, rooted in the particular
social, economic and cultural conditions of each period. In his view, recent condemnation of
gangsta-rap, computer games and ‘video nasties’not only illustrates our remarkable capacity
for historical amnesia, but also our reluctance to confront other potentially more complicated
causes of youth crime.
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