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Introduction
Prior to New Labour coming to power in 1997, the Audit Commission Report in 1996 on Misspent Youth was highly critical of youth justice in England and Wales. It concluded:
The current system for dealing with youth crime is inefficient and expensive while little is being done to deal effectively with juvenile nuisance. The present arrangements are failing young people who are not being guided away from offending to constructive activities ([1] Audit Commission, 1996, p. 96).
Subsequently, New Labour's electoral success, in May 1997, responded to the Audit Commission with a promise to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" in No More Excuses ([40] Home Office, 1997a, p. 1). Accordingly, one of the first acts of New Labour was to modernise the youth justice field signalled by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which established the legislative groundwork for the Youth Justice Board and Youth Offending Teams (YOTs). The 1998 Act represented the precursor for a youth justice system which intervenes to tackle the known risk factors associated with youth offending including personal, family, social, educational and health factors, confronts young offenders with the consequences of their offending and assists them to develop a sense of personal responsibility while also reinforcing the responsibilities of parents.
A number of texts provide detailed overviews of youth justice since 1997 which incorporate legislative developments, sentences and sentencing, organisational and operational dynamics ([50] Newburn, 2007; [6] Burke, 2008; [75] Solomon and Garside, 2008; [49] Muncie, 2009; [43] Jamieson and Yates, 2009). By contrast this article begins at the other end by approaching the field more sociologically, primarily for analytical purposes. We suggest it is possible that bodies of social theory can be put to work to explore the youth justice field which complements sociological approaches to punishment ([22] Garland, 1990), probation and criminal justice ([66] Whitehead, 2010). Accordingly, Marxist theory would, as an example, locate the system within the politics and ideology of class conflict, and [20] Foucault (1977) the categories of power, normalisation, and the disciplinary gaze extended over recalcitrant youth. It will be made clear that attention has been directed towards a youth justice system which has become more authoritarian, punitive, but also managerial in tone ([6] Burke, 2008, p. 241;...