The `Punitive Turn' in Juvenile Justice: Cultures of Control and Rights Compliance in Western Europe and the USA
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225408091372 |
| Published date | 01 August 2008 |
| Date | 01 August 2008 |
| Author | John Muncie |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
ARTICLE
Copyright © 2008 The National Association for Youth Justice
Published by SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1473–2254, Vol 8(2): 107–121
DOI: 10.1177/1473225408091372
The ‘Punitive Turn’ in Juvenile Justice:
Cultures of Control and Rights
Compliance in Western Europe and the USA
John Muncie
Correspondence: Professor John Muncie, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open
University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA. UK. Email: j.p.muncie@open.ac.uk
Abstract
Separate systems of justice for children and young people have always been beset by issues of
contradiction and compromise. There is compelling evidence that such ambiguity is currently
being ‘resolved’ by a greater governmental resort to neo-conservative punitive and correctional
interventions and a neo-liberal responsibilizing mentality in which the protection historically
afforded to children is rapidly dissolving. This resurgent authoritarianism appears all the more
anachronistic when it is set against the widely held commitment to act within the guidelines
established by various children’s rights conventions. Of note is the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child, frequently described as the most ratifi ed human rights convention
in the world, but lamentably also the most violated. Based on international research on juvenile
custody rates and children’s rights compliance in the USA and Western Europe, this article
examines why and to what extent ‘American exceptionalism’ might be permeating European
nation states.1
Keywords: children; convergence; custody; diversity; juvenile justice policy, punitiveness; rights
compliance
It is now almost a decade since Wacquant (1999a) noted how law and order talk directed at
‘youth’, ‘problem neighbourhoods’, ‘incivilities’ and ‘urban violence’ had come to increasingly
dominate the political and media landscape of the USA. Signifi cantly, he argued, this talk was
also in the process of gradually permeating European public debate such that it had begun to
provide the framework for any broader political discussions of justice, safety, community and
so on. Wacquant detailed how various neo-conservative think tanks, foundations, policy entre-
preneurs and commercial enterprises in the USA were able to valorise the diminution of the
social or welfare state (in the name of neo-liberal economic competitiveness) and the expansion
of a penal or punitive state (in order to deal with the economically excluded). Wacquant records
how this mentality:
…originates in Washington and New York City, crosses the Atlantic to lash itself down in
London, and, from there, stretches its channels and capillaries throughout the Continent and
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