A Political Ecology of Youth and Crime

This book proposes a new conceptual framework for theorising young people's relationship with crime. It emerges from a critique of the narrow approach advocated by developmental criminology and argues for an analysis that recognises and includes the important contribution that the young themselves can make to the theorising and understanding of their relationship with crime. Explicitly using the voices of a group of working class young people who are defined as "a social problem," this approach emphasises how criminal identities and pathways are strongly influenced by the interactions embedded in political ecological systems and relationships.



Drawing upon the work of the social psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this book explores young people's "nested" and "political" ecological relationships with crime. The Political Ecology of Youth and Crime examines the impacts of these relationships through an empirical investigation of the important "places" and "spaces" in young people's lives; in their social relationships with peers and family members; and within formal institutional systems such as education, youth justice and social care. This book makes an important new contribution to how we understand the relationship between youth and crime in the contexts of sociology, criminology, social psychology and education.

ALAN FRANCE is a professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He has, over the past 20 years, been researching and writing on youth related issues. He set up and established the International Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth (CSCY) at the University of Sheffield in 2002 and was Director of the Centre for Social Policy Research (CRSP) at Loughborough University (2006 – 2010). He has written extensively on youth policy, risk, citizenship, and youth crime and has a number of publications including Understanding Youth in Late Modernity (2007) and Pathways and Crime Prevention (2007).


DOROTHY BOTTRELL is a senior lcturer in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She worked in secondary teaching, juvenile justice, youth and community work before taking up an academic post in 2007. Dorothy is Convenor of the University of Sydney Network on Childhood and Youth Research and co-editor of Schools, Communities and Social Inclusion (Palgrave, 2011) and Communities and Change (2008).





DERRICK ARMSTRONG is a professor of Education and is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Sydney. His research has focussed on issues of social inclusion and exclusion in education and the ways in which disadvantage and "deviance" are identified and managed by professionals, social agencies and institutions working with children and young people. He is author, co-author and editor of eight books and monographs. His most recent publication is Inclusive Education: International Policy and Practice, (2010) with Armstrong, A.C., and Spandagou, I.