The New Politics of Youth Crime : Discipline or Solidarity? (Rev. ed)

This text is written by one of the UK's leading commentators on the policy and practice of youth justice.

The author accounts for the centrality of youth crime to the New Labour project, and analyses New Labour's youth justice strategy and its articulation in the youth justice provisions of the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) and subsequent legislation.

Pitts then critically dissects the theories of crime and methods of intervention which underpin the Act, suggesting that it is their political fit with a "re-moralising political agenda, rather than their explanatory power of rehabilitative bite", which account for their current popularity.

The text also contrasts the real problems of youth crime in the UK at the turn of the 21st century with the problems identified by the criminology of the Third Way, and offers an exhaustive analysis of the worsening predicament of the growing band of "lower class" young people, trapped at the bottom of the social structure who are most likely to be drawn into the youth justice system. Pitts locates their plight within the erosion of political and civic solidarity that is deepening social divisions, exacerbating social exclusion and, amongst other things, fostering youth crime.

Drawing upon research undertaken in France in the 1990s, Pitts outlines an alternative youth crime prevention strategy rooted in an attempt to establish solidarity with estranged young people rather than simply impose discipline upon them.