David Brown

Chris Cunneen

Courtney Young

Melanie Schwartz

Julie Stubbs

Justice reinvestment was introduced as a response to mass incarceration and racial disparity in the United States in 2003. This book examines justice reinvestment from its origins, its potential as a mechanism for winding back imprisonment rates, and its portability to Australia, the United Kingdom and beyond. The authors analyze the principles and processes of justice reinvestment, including the early neighborhood focus on 'million dollar blocks'. They further scrutinize the claims of evidence-based and data-driven policy, which have been used in the practical implementation strategies featured in bipartisan legislative criminal justice system reforms. This book takes a comparative approach to justice reinvestment by examining the differences in political, legal and cultural contexts between the United States and Australia in particular. It argues for a community-driven approach, originating in vulnerable Indigenous communities with high imprisonment rates, as part of a more general movement for Indigenous democracy. While supporting a social justice approach, the book confronts significantly the problematic features of the politics of locality and community, the process of criminal justice policy transfer, and rationalist conceptions of policy. It will be essential reading for scholars, students and practitioners of criminal justice and criminal law.

Winding Back Imprisonment

Justice Reinvestment

Barry Goldson

Sophie Russell

Eileen Baldry

Damon Briggs

This book represents the first major analysis of Anglo-Australian youth justice and penality to be published and it makes significant theoretical and empirical contributions to the wider field of comparative criminology. By exploring trends in law, policy and practice over a forty-year period, the book critically surveys the ‘moving images’ of youth justice regimes and penal cultures, the principal drivers of reform, the core outcomes of such processes and the overall implications for theory building. It addresses a wide range of questions including: How has the temporal and spatial patterning of youth justice and penality evolved since the early 1980s to the present time? What impacts have legislative and policy reforms imposed upon processes of criminalisation, sentencing practices and the use of penal detention for children and young people? How do we comprehend both the diverse ways in which public representations of ‘young offenders’ are shaped, structured and disseminated and the varied, conflicting and contradictory effects of such representations? To what extent do international human rights standards influence law, policy and practice in the realms of youth justice and penality? To what extent are youth justice systems implicated in the production and reproduction of social injustices? How, and to what degree, are youth justice systems and penal cultures internationalised, nationalised, regionalised or localised? The book is essential reading for researchers, students and tutors in criminology, criminal justice, law, social policy, sociology and youth studies.

Youth Justice and Penality in Comparative Context

Melanie Schwartz

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