Book Review: Crime and Justice

Banks’ book provides a scholarly and internationally contextualized account of a range of issues and debates relevant to youth crime and youth justice. The analysis is presented over 10 chapters combining theoretical overviews alongside empirical evidence and practical examples in an attempt to ‘convey a powerful sense of the experience of juvenile justice’ (p. 1). One of the major strengths of the book is the fact that it draws on primary theoretical and empirical sources to encourage readers to critically explore the intersections of social, political, cultural and economic factors to youth crime and justice. This strategy is usefully supported by the inclusion of both notes and a list of references for each chapter, which signpost the curious reader to a range of supplementary sources.

The first three chapters introduce Banks’ key concerns which are returned to throughout this volume, namely the social construction of juvenile delinquency, how criminology has sought to explain youth crime and how the state has responded. The introduction focuses on the 19^th century and the contributions that developments in education and recreation and in relation to the governance of family life and personal morality, have made to ‘creating norms to regulate youthful behaviour’ (p. 4) and to constructing the juvenile delinquent. Then, on the basis that an understanding of why crime occurs is a necessary precursor to developing strategies to address it, Chapter 2 provides a solid and accessible overview of a range of mainstream theories of juvenile delinquency. These include strain, social learning, control and labelling theories, alongside a consideration of feminist contributions to criminology. Chapter 3 traces the development of institutions for juvenile delinquents in the United States. Of particular interest here is Banks’ use of qualitative studies to examine the power relations within these institutions and the strategies juveniles enact to resist these. She concludes that such qualitative studies ‘attest to the superficiality and pointlessness of many youth treatment programs’ (p. 70).

Chapters 4 and 5 address questions of diversity and equality. Chapter 4 explores the gendered nature of youth crime and juvenile justice and asserts the need to better understand how ‘gender is performed in the context of offending’ and to address the sexism and paternalism inherent to juvenile justice which renders it a ‘problematic site for gender specific services’ for girls and young women (p. 98). Chapter 5 examines the social, economic and cultural landscape which characterize the experiences of minority groups in the US and how these experiences have contributed to fears of young Black males via their construction as ‘super-predators’ and ‘underclass’ gang members (p. 114). This is followed by a depressingly familiar tale of bias and disproportionality in the operation of the US juvenile justice system.

Chapter 6 comprises the most substantive chapter of this volume addressing the issue of youth culture and delinquency. It traces the development of criminological interest in delinquent youth cultures via the Chicago School, the Birmingham School, and the post-modern turn, before focusing on cultural criminology and its analysis of acid house and rave culture, graffiti, and skateboarding. Drawing on experiences from a range of jurisdictions (Australia, the Netherlands, the UK and the US), Banks illustrates the analysis throughout with quotes from young people to critically explore the relative strengths and weaknesses of various theoretical approaches to studying delinquent youth cultures. Attention then turns, in Chapter 7, to the close association of moral panics to adolescence and youth. Banks provides an accessible overview of key theories of moral panics before applying their insights to an exploration of school shootings, the James Bulger case, Mods and Rockers, girl’s violence, girl gangs and gangs. She argues that moral panics provide ‘an important framework for analysing social movements that erupt when conditions seem to give rise to a threat to societal interest’ (p. 220).

Chapters 8 and 9 focus directly on effective juvenile justice policy and practice. Chapter 8 is wholly devoted to a consideration of restorative justice on the basis that this approach has had the greatest worldwide impact in the field of juvenile justice. This chapter provides an ambitious and engaging overview of the theoretical foundations of restorative justice, its relative strengths and weaknesses and its implementation within a variety of jurisdictions. Chapter 9 focuses on ‘what works’ in the prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents. It asserts the ineffectiveness of deterrence based interventions such as boot camps and scared straight programmes and emphasizes the effectiveness of ‘gold standard’ community-based programmes such as multi-systemic therapy (MST), functional family therapy (FFT), multi-dimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) and aggressive replacement training (ART). In practice, these gold standard programmes, alongside culturally specific and gender sensitive provision, are the exception as opposed to the norm in juvenile justice policy and practice.

The final chapter returns to the question of the social construction of juvenile delinquency via a focus on the experiences of childhood in Bangladesh and the use of child soldiers in Africa. These examples are drawn upon to emphasize the cultural specificity of childhood and juvenile justice policy, to highlight the need to prioritize human rights and to question state power, while acknowledging that international youth justice policy transfer is likely to be mediated by national and local cultures.

The broad scope of Banks’ analysis is an impressive undertaking and the book is particularly strong in addressing the gender question. My minor reservations relate to the dated nature of some of the statistics on youth crime and youth justice presented and the absence of some critical youth justice concerns, particularly in respect of questioning risk based interventions and the creeping individualization and responsibilization of young offenders (see, for example, Case and Haines, 2009). However, Banks’ analysis is appropriately pitched to undergraduate students and will prove popular, accessible and academically beneficial to those studying criminology, youth crime, youth justice and related areas.