Review: Youth Justice: Ideas, Policy, Practice (2nd edn) Roger Smith Willan Publishing; pp 272; £19.50, pbk ISBN-10: 1—843922—24—X; ISBN-13: 978—1—843922—24—7
| Author | Ian Macfadyen |
| DOI | 10.1177/02645505080550010602 |
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
98 Probation Journal 55(1)
Youth Justice: Ideas, Policy,
Practice (2nd edn)
Roger Smith
Willan Publishing; pp 272; £19.50, pbk
ISBN-10: 1–843922–24–X;
ISBN-13: 978–1–843922–24–7
Roger Smith is a Professor of Social Work Research, having
previously worked as a probation officer and on policy
work in the voluntary sector. This book is a revised and
updated second edition of his original account of youth
justice, which was first published in 2003. Professor Smith starts from the premise
that a liberal and humane approach to youth justice is both achievable and desir-
able; he also believes that it might actually be acceptable too. His writing is
grounded in a strongly developed sense of social justice and it reads as if written
by a good old-fashioned, well-informed social worker from the late 1970s.
Smith claims, rather depressingly, that the present youth justice system is increas-
ingly characterized by, ‘a culture of control and an atmosphere of suspicion and
hostility towards children and young people’ (p. ix). He is scathing in his criticism
of the component parts of the youth justice system, and harks back to a less
complicated time when he maintains it was at least possible to carry out some
effective work. His purpose in producing a second edition is to try and understand
why things have gone wrong over the past few decades and to begin again to
think about the possibilities of carrying out progressive practice. He finishes the
book by concluding that what is most needed now is for us to reinvent the wheel,
in other words, to return back to basic social work values.
Smith’s account does not provide a great deal of historical background and his
analysis begins in the 1980s. The first part of the book deals with an assessment
of juvenile justice as it then was, when an avowedly right wing and authoritarian
government presided over one of the most benign and liberal periods ever
witnessed in the treatment of young offenders (p. x). The author then takes us
through the...
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