This book draws from various fields of knowledge, in an effort to theorise, create new and innovative conceptual platforms and develop further the hybrid idea of discourses around social inclusion and youth (from policy, practice and research perspectives). Youth: Responding to lives – An international handbook attempts to fill the persistent gap in the problematisation and understanding of inclusion, communalism, citizenship – that are intertwined within the complex youth debate. It writhes and wriggles to highlight the interconnections between the encounters, events and endeavors in young people’s lives. The focus of this edited work is also intended to help us understand how young people shape their development, involvement, and visibility as socio-political actors within their communities. It is this speckled experience of youth that remains one of the most electrifying stages in a community’s lifecycle. Contributors to this text have engaged with notions around identity and change, involvement, social behavior, community cohesion, politics and social activism. The chapters offer an array of critical perspectives on social policies and the broad realm of social inclusion/exclusion and how it affects young people. This book essentially analyses equal opportunities and its allied concepts, including inequality, inequity, disadvantage and diversity that have been studied extensively across all disciplines of social sciences and humanities but now need a youth studies ‘application’.

The problem of how to respond to violence involving young people continues to challenge youth workers and policy makers across Europe and the world. In this book, Mike Seal and Pete Harris draw on the findings of a two-year European research project--in which peer researchers spoke to young people--to examine different responses to youth violence. Developing a unique analytical framework that combines elements of critical theory, psychosocial criminology, and applied existential philosophy, the authors present a new model for responding meaningfully and effectively to these issues at personal/psychological, community/cultural, and structural/symbolic levels. Through a series of case studies, Seal and Harris show how these approaches have been applied in different practice settings. Essential reading in the fields of youth and community work, social work, criminology, youth justice, and youth studies, this book will stimulate critical new thinking and encourage reflective and theoretically informed responses to addressing youth violence in practice.

Klein consider the quality (and quantity) of response to (and for) status offenders at local community service outlets in seven different cities. By this method, the authors can determine whether such response practices conform with the ideological thrusts embedded in state legislation.

This book presents a critique of the traditional responses to youth crime by criminal justice agencies in Australia, UK, New Zealand, USA, Canada, and a vision of how these agencies could respond more effectively. The critique examines the ways in which traditional criminal justice approaches trap young people into, rather than turn them away from, a life of crime. The vision is for criminal justice agencies - police, courts, and corrections - to become more pro-active partners in society's efforts to guide young people towards becoming happy and productive citizens; for these agencies to focus less on the exercise of retributive powers and to embrace restorative approaches; and for agencies to develop a crime prevention role through partnership with community organisations. Author Paul Omaji argues against concentrating resources on the symptom when the underlying causes are within our intellectual grasp and amenable to effective criminal justice responses. Omaji demonstrates the capacity of criminal justice agencies to become constructive partners with community organisations in preventing youth crime and constructs ground rules for high impact partnerships.

The authors describe what is known about Canadian youth crime, and the operation of the youth justice system in the context of the changes in the law that are taking place. The authors posit that the youth justice system has a relatively modest impact on youth crime. In order to respond intelligently to it and to evaluate the response of the state, two sets of information must be understood. First, society must try to understand what 'youth crime' looks like in Canada. Second, in order to understand 1 and evaluate 1 the changes that are being made in youth justice legislation in Canada, a clear understanding of the manner in which the youth justice system currently operates is necessary.

A cutting-edge study showcases the emergence of contemporary youth activism in the United States, its benefits to young people, its role in strengthening society, and its powerful social justice implications. At a time when youth are too often dismissed as either empowered consumers or disempowered deviants, it is vital to understand how these young people are pushing back, challenging such constructions, and advancing new possibilities for their institutions and themselves. This book examines the latest developments in the field of contemporary youth activism (CYA) and documents the myriad ways in which youth activists are effecting social change, even as they experience personal change. By taking public, political action on a range of intersecting issues, youth activists are shifting their own developmental pathways, shaping public policy, and shaking up traditional paradigms. Section one of the book offers a historical perspective on youth activism in the United States, followed by a discussion of contemporary examples of CYA for social justice. The second and third sections analyze the individual, institutional, and ideological effects of CYA, arguing that youth activism works to promote change at three levels: self, systems, and in the broader society. Readers will come away with a clearer understanding of the many ways in which today's youth activists are working to reimagine and remake American democracy, reawakening the promise of a multi-issue, progressive movement for social justice.

A society’s response to youth crime reveals much about its broader cultural values, social circumstances, and political affairs. This book examines reactions and policy responses to youth delinquency and crime in Hong Kong during its colonial and post-colonial periods, and in doing so, underscores the history of Hong Kong itself and its present-day circumstances. Exploring how officials have responded to youth crime in Hong Kong over time, this book tracks the emergence of a penal elitist mode of governance, highlighting concerns not only about young people’s behavior but the need for officials to establish state authority and promote citizen identification. In turn, it reveals an alternative to the ‘usual story’ about youth crime found in many western regions and provides an opportunity to begin to develop a comparative criminology. The book examines the emergence of the ‘disciplinary welfare’ tariff during the 1970s, debates and policy changes related to the minimum age of criminal responsibility and youth sex crimes, and inaction regarding the introduction of restorative justice initiatives in the post-colonial era. It also addresses the power of ‘Post-80s’ youth to protest and challenge government policies, which directly combat contemporary fears regarding the ‘mainlandization’ of Hong Kong. Drawing on archival sources, official reports and interviews with key stakeholders in the juvenile justice system, Responding to Youth Crime in Hong Kong will appeal to students and scholars interested in Chinese society, criminology, social work, sociology and youth studies.