Understanding Youth Crime : An Australian Study

Adolescence is popularly understood as a transitional phase of turbulence and extremes.

It is also often associated with "trouble". Criminal justice statistics, however, reveal that youth criminality remains a relatively rare phenomenon, less than one per cent of the total adolescent population in any given year.

This book is based upon a major Australian research programme to consider the key social factors impacting upon the lives of young people.

A sample of 1300 young people was divided into three major subgroups: a "control" group, drawn from state secondary schools and closely approximating the general population; a chronically marginalized cohort representing a "vulnerable group", and a group of offenders, most of whom were incarcerated at the time of the research.