ABSTRACT
As noted in previous chapters, recent years have witnessed extensive investment in change in the youth justice system, particularly around the turn of the century, but with significant further developments subsequently. This, it has been suggested, has seen the establishment of a sound and sustainable basis for the delivery of interventions that ‘work’, according to the supporting evidence (Burnett and Roberts, 2004). Youth justice has been the site of copious policy analysis (Audit Commission, 1996, 2004; Smith, 2010; Centre for Social Justice, 2012, for example), and research inquiries, including systematic reviews (Goldblatt and Lewis, 1999). Much work focused on evaluations of New Labour practice initiatives (Holdaway et al., 2001; Newburn et al., 2001a; Baker et al., 2002; Youth Justice Board, 2005e; Gray et al., 2005). This growing body of evidence has been seen essentially as providing validation for new developments in practice and procedures, and this in turn has offered reassurance to policy makers that their initiatives are on the right track. With a change in government, it is notable that much of the machinery of youth justice and the ‘tools of practice’ have remained substantially unaffected by political change.
