Juvenile Justice - LAWS8105

Description

• The historical origins and contemporary manifestations of discrete juvenile/youth justice systems will be examined;
• The true nature and extent of youth offending and the patterning of youth crime will be surveyed;
• The multiple competing imperatives that comprise youth justice law, policy and practice including: ‘welfare’, ‘justice’, ‘informalism’, ‘treatment’, ‘rights’, ‘responsibilities’, ‘prevention’, ‘restoration’, ‘remoralisation’, ‘rehabilitation’, ‘retribution’ and ‘punishment’ will be analysed;
• The roles and functions of the constituent agencies that make-up modern juvenile/youth systems will be explored;
• The module will be underpinned by comparative analyses at local, national and transnational levels and the application of international human rights standards, treaties, rules, conventions and guidelines in the juvenile/youth justice sphere.

LLM Specialisation

Recommended Prior Knowledge

Course Objectives

• To provide a critical overview of the historical development of state policy responses to youth crime (in Australia and elsewhere) and to explore socio-legal and criminological and conceptualisations of ‘youth’, ‘crime’, ‘criminalisation’ and ‘justice’;
• To analyse the competing priorities and underpinning discourses that inform juvenile/youth justice law, policy and practice;
• To explore the application of juvenile/youth justice law and policy through the interventions of state agencies, and to consider the principal consequences of such interventions for ‘young offenders’, the management of youth crime and the regulation and governance of young people;
• To apply comparative and international human-rights frameworks to the study of juvenile/youth justice.

Course Outcomes

• An understanding of the trajectory of law, policy and practice responses to youth crime (in Australia and elsewhere) from the early nineteenth century to the present and a familiarity with key debates within juvenile/youth justice and youth criminology including a critical grasp of the politics of juvenile/youth justice and social control.
• An ability to critically analyse the competing priorities, tensions and paradoxes intrinsic to ‘welfare’, ‘justice’ and ‘retributive’/‘punitive’ approaches to youth crime and juvenile/youth justice.
• An appreciation of the inter-face between youth justice law and policy and state intervention juvenile/youth justice practice.
• A capacity to apply comparative and human-rights frameworks to the study of juvenile/youth justice.

1. •The course will be assessed in three core ways:
2. •Class participation (comprising 10% of the total mark)
3. •Seminar presentation and paper (comprising 20% of the total mark)
4. •Research-based essay/assignment (comprising 70% of the total mark)".