ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasises the difficulty of presenting a systematic analysis of race, ethnicity and juvenile justice in Europe in the absence of comprehensive pan-European data. It focuses on proxies for race and ethnicity such as 'foreign-born parents' and 'migrant' status. Moreover, the core line of argument emphasises the importance of taking account of the substantial over-representation of minority and migrant children and young people within conditions of persistent, long-term poverty and exclusion from education, employment or training, in order to explain the likelihood of their coming into contact with the police and juvenile justice systems across Europe. The central thesis is that welfare and justice mixes and clusters – the balance between welfare state provision and criminal justice system responses – among European countries best explain links between ethnicity, poverty, delinquency and juvenile justice. The chapter concludes that some children and young people in Europe are doubly punished for their minority/migrant status and for being poor.
