ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the narratives of politicians, professionals and defendants. The comparison reveals a change over time: youth crime became progressively more pejorative and threatening. In the socially critical positions of the 1970s and 1980, offences were to be largely disregarded; criticism was directed primarily at society, the state and the criminal justice system and not at individual offenders. Over time, the opposite became predominant. Society was to an extent discursively excused: as offenders were increasingly blamed for causing harm, society became increasingly blameless and the criminal justice system more legitimate, for it was acting against the now almost unquestioned evil of the crime. At the same time, we saw the rise of the innocent, ‘pure’ victim as an object to be protected by politics and the professions. Youth crime thus demonstrates an amazing flexibility as regards evaluations and relevant categories. Offenders are by no means always offenders and victims are not automatically linked to specific offences. Nothing in the field of youth crime is thus a natural given, even though offenders themselves did not question the fact that they had to be punished. They assumed an ‘automatism’ of repeat offending and sanctions, only calling for clemency for themselves.
