Concluding remarks: Youth justice in a global world

Abstract

In the preceding chapters we have considered the ways in which six different countries structure their youth justice systems and process young people they consider delinquent. We can see how each society constructs its youth justice system within its own cultural strictures. Thus, whether delinquency is considered an external, individualised factor for which only the young person is responsible and for which their propensity must be risk-assessed. Or whether it is considered that some form of ‘community’ intervention focused on ‘re-training’, ‘re-integration’ or ‘re-education’ is called for. The processes that are chosen and the interventions that are devised are in essence informed by whether that culture believes ‘society’ to be composed of atomised individuals or of a ‘community’ of interconnected or integrated people to a greater or lesser extent. In considering these options, however, there should not be a simplistic equation in which there is an implicit assumption that ‘individual’ must always equal bad and punishing, and ‘community’ must always equal good and supportive. ‘Community’ is a loaded, if universal, term and invoking it might simply serve to define the outsider, to label and stigmatise them. A key factor within any structure must therefore be a full consideration of how different forms of power, knowledge and self-definition are able to flourish or be contained.