As mentioned in Chapter 1, conventionality amongst young people is often ignored when attempting to come to terms with deviant behaviour in youth (MacDonald, 1997). Indeed, academics, policy makers and the media tend to give disproportionate attention to young people’s criminal activity, thus sensationalizing the ‘problem’. Policy interest in what works with offenders has often undermined an exploration of issues relating to how and why certain interventions work (Maruna, 1998), how and why indirect interventions may impact on offending behaviour (e.g. poverty, social networks and employment or educational opportunities) and what offenders themselves think are the problems. Whilst youth justice research in particular has been invaluable in raising our academic awareness of the issues surrounding offending amongst young people, it has not always impacted positively on the direction in which youth justice policy is heading. There are anomalies in our understanding of what constitutes offending behaviour between and within cultures and how that behaviour should be defi ned and measured. There is also confusion about causes versus correlates of offending. Causes suggest that a negation of offending behaviour would come about from an absence of those factors directly infl uencing the behaviour. Correlates, on the other hand, suggest only potential association, and thus are unable to separate out cause and effect. However,

rarely do policy makers address the causes so much as tinker with the correlates of crime. This chapter briefl y explores the literature since the 1950s on why young people might start offending and the now burgeoning literature on why the majority of young people stop offending. It is not a defi nitive review of the criminological literature but an illustration of the challenges for current policy and the potential for further research.1