“‘There Must be Some Way of Dealing with Kids’: Young Offenders, Public Attitudes and Policy Change”

Source: (2002) Youth Justice. 2(1): 3-12.

NNew Labour’s youth justice reforms have left progressives disappointed by a failure to take
more radical steps to raise the age of criminal responsibility and phase out penal custody.
This paper argues that the basic punitive orientation governing youth justice policy was
established in the early 1990s, in the wake of concern about persistent juvenile offenders
and the high-profile James Bulger case. The punitive orientation of policy is apparently
supported by public opinion, or at least the perception of public opinion held by policy
makers. The paper summarises what is known about public attitudes to adult and juvenile
offenders and suggests a strategy to increase understanding and raise the level of debate,
which are prerequisites for any fundamental change in policy orientation. (author’s abstract)