Book Review: Tough Justice
| Author | Denis Jones |
| DOI | 10.1177/147322540100100211 |
| Published date | 01 August 2001 |
| Date | 01 August 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
authors set out to examine the impact of social structures in general, it is notable that they
focus in the main on class. Gender, whilst not absent, is certainly less prominent and only
receives comparable attention in the chapter on youth lifestyles. Only passing reference is made
to race, considered here to be reducible to class. Given this strong emphasis on class, and
recent tendencies to use different signifiers of social stratification, some readers might have
preferred that the authors justified their use of the concept more explicitly. Some readers are
also likely to take issue with Furlong and Cartmel’s suggestion that the distribution of official
levels of criminality between social groups does not arise from significant differences in their
patterns of offending, but mainly reflects the activities of law enforcement agencies.
These points aside, the text is of sufficient quality to appeal to a wide academic readership.
Indeed, other researchers are likely to be able to apply Furlong and Cartmel’s theoretical
template productively to analyses of their own data. Considered as a whole Young People and
Social Change is undoubtedly a strong contribution to the study of both contemporary youth
and ‘late-modern’society.
Barry Goldson and Eleanor Peters, Tough Justice, London, The Children’s
Society, 2000, £5.95, 1 899783 38 5.
Reviewed by: Denis Jones, Book Reviews Editor
In just 33 pages, Goldson and Peters provide a devastating critique of New Labour policy for
young offenders, focusing on the extension of the use of custody, the abolition of doli incapax
the age of criminal responsibility, and the wider erosion of legal safeguards for children and
young people. Goldson and Peters document the now well known problems of mental illness
and suicide in Britain’s youth prisons, and compare this with more successful Children’s Society
projects based in the community.
Juliet Lyon, Catherine Dennison and Anita Wilson, Tell Them so they Listen:
Messages from Young People in Custody, Home Office Research Study 201,
London, 2000, (free), 1-84082-437-9.
Reviewed by: Dr Loraine Gelsthorpe, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge
University
This book is the product of research carried out by the Trust for the Study of Adolescence.
It is based on focus group discussions with young people in custody (seven male and three
female establishments) carried out during December 1998 and March 1999. Eighty four young
people took part in the ten focus group discussions. Of the 84, 26 were young women, 30
were under the age of eighteen, and based on the visual categorisations of the researchers, 19
young people were Black, Asian or mixed race. Most were convicted, though a small number
were awaiting sentencing. The institutions themselves, we are told, were selected on the advice
of the Research and Statistics Directorate and the Young Offender Group on the basis of
geographical spread, ethnically diverse populations and wide range of offence categories.
Within each institution the groups were selected on a random basis.
The methodological approach is perhaps unusual for a Home Office study, but is part of a
broad genre of studies which have attempted to ‘give voice to’or allow research participants
themselves to speak. In this sense the report is to be welcomed as an ‘undiluted message’,although
one might have wished for a little more detail on the analysis of the focus group discussions.
As the authors describe, discussion in the groups focused on three main areas: life before
and leading up to entering prison, experiences of custody, and hopes, fears and plans for the
Youth Justice Vol. 1 No. 2 61
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