ABSTRACT
In 1998 the Labour government in the UK introduced the Crime and Disorder Act. This Act brought into being multi-agency Youth Offending Teams (YOT) in each local authority area and created the Youth Justice Board (YJB) of England and Wales to oversee their development and to assume control of secure and penal provision for juveniles; henceforth to be known as the ‘secure estate’. Publication of the YOT Evaluation was preceded by considerable prevarication and uncertainty at the YJB. The populist demand for greater surveillance, control and punishment has resulted in an overall increase in the numbers of juveniles incarcerated and an extension of incarceration to a new, younger, population. One of the few ‘big ideas’ informing UK criminal justice policy at the dawn of the 21st century is ‘cultural change’. Korrectional Karaoke’ is an attempt to peddle simplistic, but politically acceptable, solutions to remarkably complex social, economic and cultural problems.
