Introduction and context

The ‘risk business’ has been described as one of the world's largest industries (Adams, 1995), characterised by phenomenal growth and net widening. Crime management has been no exception, with risk forming a key ingredient of penal policy in recent years (see Kemshall, 2003 and 2006 for a full review). In the adult arena this has seen increased attention to the ‘community protection model’ (Connelly and Williamson, 2000), with an emphasis upon public protection sentencing, restrictive conditions in the community, and interventions led by risk (Wood and Kemshall, 2007). Within this paradigm, adults who offend have largely been characterised as ‘risk taking’, intransigent, morally unworthy, and in need of corrective treatment, moral reeducation and ‘responsibilisation’ (see Kemshall, 2002a for a further discussion). Where such moral re-engineering programmes fail, monitoring, surveillance and ‘management in place’ are justified (Feeley and Simon, 1994; Garland, 1996, 1997 and 2001; O’Malley, 2004 and 2006). This has resulted in a peculiar bifurcation in the management of risk, with those deemed amenable to change subject to risk management strategies based on behaviour change and cognitive treatments; and those deemed intransigent or non-compliant subject to risk management strategies based on containment and exclusion. While there have often been difficulties in operating such bifurcation in a pure form (Kemshall, 2002a), it is possible to discern such tactics in the operation of the multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) and in the community management of those who offend who pose a high risk (Kemshall, 2003). The community protection model has also been given added impetus by high-profile risk management failures (in both the adult and youth justice arenas), and by intensive media coverage of both systemic and individual failures (Thomas, 2005).

The pervasiveness of risk has seeped into the youth justice arena and more broadly into social policy conceptions and responses to youth (Kemshall, 2007), resulting in an increased ‘problematisation of youth’ (Kelly, 2000) and state-driven interventions (predominantly through criminal justice agencies) to regulate and control youth. It is, however, tempting to make grand claims about the ubiquitous nature of risk, particularly at the policy level, although such claims can often be difficult to evidence empirically (Dingwall, 1999; Kemshall and Maguire, 2001; O’Malley, 2004).