ABSTRACT

Young people and criminal behaviour have always been linked in the minds of the general public. Moreover, there are widely held commonsense notions that such activities are a recent phenomenon and invariably an outcome of the ‘permissive 1960s’ and the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family that has occurred in intervening years. It is also widely believed that in the past young people were orderly, disciplined, well behaved and law-abiding (Pearson 1983). This is a commonly held and extremely influential viewpoint which has had a considerable impact on political thinking and policy agendas.