ABSTRACT
The commission of very serious offences by children gives rise to a crime policy dilemma. On the one hand, the justice systems of many countries require such serious offences to be sanctioned by means of imprisonment or some other form of custodial sentence. On the other hand, there are powerful reasons, and a strong desire, to avoid subjecting children to imprisonment and other forms of incarceration. Imprisonment produces a large number of negative consequences and the effects of incarceration are particularly problematic for children. Through the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child we have accepted a responsibility to protect and promote the rights of children in various ways.1 This includes a requirement that children should only be subject to incarceration as a last resort. Children are nonetheless sentenced to prison and other forms of incarceration throughout the world. This also raises a large number of questions of relevance to crime policy, some of which are addressed in this book. The book focuses on children who have committed very serious offences, often in the form of serious violent crime, and who have been given custodial sentences as a result. The book examines how incarcerated children and youths experience this situation, how the damaging effects of incarceration might be reduced through efforts to introduce higher levels of custodial openness in various forms, and the significance of custodial openness for the everyday institutional lives of incarcerated young people and for their subsequent re-offending. The book also examines how these children think about their lives subsequent to
release, and about their opportunities for living what they themselves view as a better life in the future.
