Skip to main content

Youth Justice

Overview

  • Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
  • Convenor: Amy Kirby
  • Assessment: a 4000-word essay (100%)

Module description

This module provides you with a critical overview of the broad themes and key debates within contemporary youth justice in policy and practice. It explores issues of youth justice through historical, socio-legal and theoretical perspectives as well as through a set of contemporary debates.

Indicative module syllabus

  • ‘Angels vs Demons’: conceptualising childhood, youth and crime
  • Assessing the international landscape of youth justice
  • Welfare and justice
  • Risk and diverson
  • Restorative justice and positive youth justice
  • Intersectionality and youth justice
  • Youth justice and the courts
  • Young people and the use of custody
  • Joint enterprise: implications for youth justice
  • Final thoughts and essay-writing clinic

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will have:

  • examined a range of theoretical and philosophical approaches to youth justice
  • explored the history, current legislative framework and policy context of the youth justice system in England and Wales
  • situated the youth justice debate and broader policy and legislative frameworks within an international context
  • explored the intersection between race, gender and socio-economic status in youth justice policy and practice
  • considered contemporary issues in youth justice policy and practice.