Race, Recognition and Retribution in Contemporary Youth Justice: The Intractability Malleability Thesis

Race, Recognition and Retribution in Contemporary Youth Justice provides a cross-national, sociohistorical investigation of the legacy of racial discrimination, which informs contemporary youth justice practice in Canada and England. The book links racial disparities in youth justice, especially exclusion from ideologies of care and notions of future citizenship, with historical practices of exclusion.
Despite the logic of care found in both rehabilitative and retributive forms of youth justice, Black inner-city youth remain excluded from lenience and social welfare considerations. This exclusion reflects a historical legacy of racial discrimination apparent in the harsher sanctions levied against Black, innercity youth. In exploring race’s role in this arrangement, the book asks: To what extent were Black youth excluded from historic considerations of the lenience and social care, built into the logic of youth justice in England and Canada? To what extent are the disproportionately high incarceration rates, for Black, inner-city youth in the contemporary system, a reflection of a historic exclusion from considerations of lenience and social care? How might contemporary justice efforts be reoriented to explicitly prioritize considerations of lenience and social care ahead of penalty for Black, inner-city youth?
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