ABSTRACT
The community approach has had less influence upon the structure and procedure of the juvenile justice system than has the criminal justice or welfare approach. Interactionist theory and the community approach which it informs have contributed to the general failure of confidence and questioning of authority which characterises the management of social problems in the 1970s and which leaves a necessary but uncomfortable vacuum. The Children's Panels in Scotland provide an example of an attempt to include in the juvenile justice system people whose own background was similar to that of the children coming before them. The major contribution of the community approach, however, has been to make clear that any compulsory treatment of juveniles run a serious risk of stigmatising them and leaving them not cured, but with a spoiled identity. Intervention led not to an end but to what has been called an amplification of deviance.
