Title: Challenging the Criminalisation of Children and Young People: Securing a Rights-Based Agenda
Abstract: The recent history of youth justice theory-into-practice reveals a tension between – and integration of – ‘welfare’ and ‘justice’ approaches. With justification, the application of the criminal law to children and young people is controversial. In the United Kingdom an unusually low age of criminal responsibility (ten in England and Wales; eight in Scotland) assumes that young children are as criminally responsible as adults. Yet the welfarist approach was initiated to divert children from the criminal justice system – away from punishment and retribution and towards adaptive ‘treatment’ programmes. Its positive characterization is that it recognizes and provides for the ‘best interests’ of the child, intervening through state-funded programmes of care and protection while challenging punishment and incarceration (see Chapter 13 of this volume). Critics, however, argue that welfarism abandons legal and judicial safeguards, leaving children to the discretionary, permissive powers of professionals while subjecting them to indeterminate measures without recourse to review or accountability. The ‘justice’ or ‘just deserts’ approach advocates informed and transparent decisions through the due process of the law, in courts whose powers are adapted to recognize and accommodate children’s status and where criminal justice safeguards applied to adults are extended to children. Punishment is portrayed as rational, consistent and determinate: ‘fitting’ the crime while protecting the child against disproportionate or arbitrary punitive measures masked as ‘treatment’. The tension between welfare and justice approaches is not confined to limiting professional discretion or
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 33
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