ABSTRACT
The prevention of youth crime offers the prospect of fewer ‘child offenders’ leading adult lives damaged by their early involvement in crime and the criminal justice system. The 1980s were a busy time for central government departments concerned with crime prevention. If crime prevention had developed and consolidated since the late 1970s, the history of contemporary ‘youth justice’ arguably commences a decade earlier with the passage of the Children and Young Persons Act in 1969. Holistic or criminality prevention is broadly consistent both with the general direction of current UK social policy and with the ‘prevailing wisdom’ on crime prevention and community safety. In Britain, the principal initiative concerned with what is sometimes referred to as ‘positive’ or ‘holistic’ prevention is the ‘Communities that Care’ programme, an approach which was originally developed in the USA by Professors J. David Hawkins and Richard Catalano of the University of Washington in Seattle.
