This assignment examines the ‘care / control dilemma’ at the core of Youth Justice practice. It examines the effects of recent changes in legislation and the political context in which these changes took place. The welfare versus justice argument is well versed and in preparation for this assignment I found that there was a wealth of social theories that were relevant to this topic. It was interesting to see the way in which young offenders are perceived by society and how these children or young people can be thought of as a threat to the social order.

I begin the assignment by applying the work of Stanley Cohen to the political context in which legislative changes took place. Cohen’s work Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, first published in 1972 provided a theoretical interpretation of a prevalent youth subculture of that time. Cohen uses the Deviancy Amplification Theory to describe how deviant acts are perceived by the public. Through a process of social reactions, through media, the public and various ‘experts’, the deviant act is amplified to a stage where the government are required to react through policy changes.
I will then go on to discuss the substantial changes that have taken place in government legislation and the effects that this has had for social workers in the field of youth justice. I evaluate the welfare versus justice argument; critically examining arguments that the government has not taken the necessary steps to eradicate the root cause of youth crime; poverty. I have chosen Michel Foucault’s 1991 work Discipline and Punish and his work on power and knowledge (ed. Gordon, 1980) to argue that post-structuralist theory provides a useful grounding on which to understand the control element of social work in the field of youth justice.

The children that are brought to the attention of social workers are the children that societies have anxieties about. In the case of young offenders, society is often anxious to ‘control’ these children as they see the problem as being an absence of control from parents. The issues of juvenile crime seem to encapsulate many of the anxieties about the state and about society in general. It brings into question ideas of childhood, adolescence, of gender roles, the proper socialisation of children and more generally, people’s sense of safety, community and moral values (Hill & Tidsdall 1997). Crimes committed by children, although more rare, offer the potential for sensationalism. Media reporting often relies heavily on ‘simplistic generalisations’ with children represented as ‘objects of concern’ or ‘threats to the social order’ (Scraton 1997).

‘Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests. Its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media: moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people’. (Cohen 2001).

The circumstances in which moral panics are created are said to be affected by the prevailing political climate. The election of the Conservatives in 1979, with their pre-election promise of social authoritarianism under the Thatcherite New Rights agenda, transformed the social, political and economic landscape. Closely related to a ‘crisis’ in law and order, rising crime, militant unions, declining moral standards was the powerful rhetoric ‘the decline of the family’. One of the socially constructed ‘enemies within’ of the time was those dependent on the state. Mass unemployment caused high levels of impoverishment, ‘those assigned to the social margins were condemned roundly for their own misfortunes’ (Davis & Bourhill 1997:31). The alleged ‘folk devils’ of the time became those said to be bereft of personal responsibility; the children and young people from families that lacked traditional family values.

In February 1993, the abduction, suffering and murder of two year-old, James Bulger, by two 10-year-old boys; Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, unleashed moral outrage unprecedented in its emotive force (Davis & Bourhill 1997). Although this crime was an ‘exception’ it became symbolic of a society in social and moral decline and more specifically, symbolic of a juvenile crime wave.

Cohen’s classic work, first published in 1972, was just one of the sub-cultural theories of delinquency established by the Birmingham School. Their work was of value for theorising the problems associated with youth. Indicating why these might give way to moral panics and in developing