ABSTRACT

Young people sentenced to long prison terms make up a small but significant part of the juvenile prison population. Their actions have caused harm to others and long sentences have an impact on them at a significant time in their development. Those on indeterminate sentences must prove they are no longer ‘dangerous’ before they can be released. The approach to young people serving long sentences speaks to wider issues in criminal and social justice, including the idealisation of (some) childhoods, the treatment of marginalised groups, the prison industrial complex, processes of nominalisation and racialisation, the philosophy of punishment and the sociology of the body.