ABSTRACT
This chapter examines risk as a management and assessment tool influencing youth governance, tracing tensions between welfare and justice paradigms. Youth justice governance in the UK, Australasia and North America appears increasingly dominated by risk management concepts. It opens by situating the concept of risk within contemporary society, then examines its intersections with neoliberalism and the resulting transformations in penal policy and practice. Particular attention is given to individual responsibilisation regarding crime. The chapter advances to discuss the of Young Offenders Act 1997 (YOA) in NSW, considering how risk management may direct particular groups into traditional criminal justice systems rather than away through diversionary schemes. This failure to divert occurs in context-specific ways within the NSW Police Force and NSW Children's Court, which form the focus of this book.
