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This topical, accessibly written book moves beyond established critiques to outline a model of positive youth justice: Children First, Offenders Second. Already in use in Wales, the proposed model promotes child-friendly, diversionary, inclusive, engaging, promotional practice and legitimate partnership between children and adults which can serve as a blueprint for other local authorities and countries. Setting out a progressive, positive and principled model of youth justice, the book will appeal to academics, students, practitioners and policy makers seeking to improve working practices and outcomes and will make an important contribution to the debate on youth justice policy

This book aims to meet the need for an exploration of youth justice and youth offending which takes account of the origins and contemporary manifestations of risk-focused work with young people. It analyzes the influence of concepts of risk upon policy development in both England and Wales as well as internationally, highlighting tensions between the proponents of risk factor research and methodological and ethical criticisms of the risk factor paradigm. It will be essential reading for anybody wishing to understand risk factor explanation of crime, contemporary youth justice policy and respon

AbstractContemporary European youth justice practice, notably in England and Wales, fosters retrospective, risk‐focused and reductionist views of children. Enforced, inequitable, prescriptive and adult‐led youth justice relationships adulterise children and responsibilise them fully for their offending behaviour, disengaging them from constructive youth justice interventions. This article sets out and evidences an alternative model of youth justice: Children First, Offenders Second (CFOS). The CFOS model offers a whole child, preventative and diversionary approach that normalises offending by children and promotes strengths and positive behaviour. The model is grounded in the principles of child‐friendly, child‐appropriate and legitimate practice as a means of engaging children with youth justice services and interventions. Evidence of how these key principles have been animated in local practice is provided and implications for engagement in the youth justice context are discussed.

"The policy and practice of the Youth Justice System of England and Wales has become dominated by risk-focused, offender-first approaches underpinned by the deterministic, reductionist and psychosocially-biased risk factor prevention paradigm. Using the All Wales Youth Offending Strategy and the evaluation of the Welsh Assembly Government's 'Extending Entitlement' youth inclusion strategy as its touchstones, this paper explores a rights- and entitlements-based, children first model of working with young people. This model critiques the management of risks and the purported 'common aetiology' of negative and positive behaviours/ outcomes and evidences the potential advantages of pursuing a proactive, inclusionary, children first, children's rights agenda when seeking to reduce youth offending." [author's abstract]

Abstract: A public opinion survey of youth crime and justice was conducted with a sample of 496 people in Swansea. Gender and age differences in estimations of youth crime were compared to official and self‐reported youth offending statistics nationally and locally. Attitudes to sentencing and preventative measures were evaluated with reference to Swansea's positive, inclusionary approach to young people. Findings indicate that the Swansea public overestimates the extent of youth crime locally, yet it remains ambivalent about appropriate sentencing responses, favouring both punitive and preventative measures. This suggests that local public opinion is shaped by national media and political rhetoric, rather than the local realities of youth offending.

The multi‐agency, multiple intervention Promoting Prevention initiative to prevent youth offending in Swansea was evaluated with a computer‐based interactive questionnaire with 580 young people (aged 11–18). Results indicate that multiple exposure to risk factors within the main domains of the young person's life (for example, family, school) significantly increases the likelihood that a young person will become involved in problem behaviours. In contrast, exposure to multiple protective factors decreases the likelihood of these behaviours. Evaluation indicates that Promoting Prevention's consultative methodology is an empowering and engaging way of targeting interventions to promote positive behaviours and prevent anti‐social behaviour in young people.

The growth of cybercommunities is a notable social phenomenon. Empirical studies of cybercommunities have described new forms of social behaviour that call for deeper conceptual analysis. Drawing on evidence from our research in the cybercommunity Second Life, the authors examine the sociology of cybercommunities through the lens of Giddens' abstract theories of modernity. In particular, the authors suggest that an individual's participation in cybercommunities may be gauged using a spectrum of individual responses to particular abstract conditions of modernity. These abstract conditions have interpretations ranging from seeking refuge from the vicissitudes of the real world to pursuing the playful heights of modernity.