In 1976 Nils Christie gave a lecture at the University of Sheffield and suggested that conflicts in society performed certain positive functions. Conflicts are “property,” he argued, and belong to the people involved. The participants in conflict may wish to see them resolved in ways that satisfy them, but sometimes those conflicts are taken away and become the property of courts, judges, lawyers or social workers. Christie contends that conflicts make an important contribution to society, and that highly industrialized societies have too little rather than too much internal conflict. He feels that we must organize social systems so that conflicts are nurtured and made visible. In particular we must see to it that professionals do not monopolize the handling of conflicts. In our criminal justice systems, the victims of crime have in particular lost their rights to participate in conflict resolution.

In this paper we use Christie's concept of “stealing conflicts” as a tool for analysing the consequences of the increased use of lawyers in the juvenile justice system as a result of the Young Offenders Act. The Act purports to enhance juveniles' responsibility and accountability for their actions, but this end is undermined to the extent that lawyers steal the conflicts. Furthermore, we argue that this trend toward legalism, which characterizes North America today, is different from patterns in some European countries such as France.