Young People ‘At Risk’ of What? Challenging Risk-focused Early Intervention as Crime Prevention

Abstract

This article attempts to broker a compromise between critical criminological challenges to the populist (punitivist) and negative conceptions of young people ‘at risk’ of offending -which are used to justify (potentially deleterious) risk-based interventions (Goldson, 2005) -and the positivist risk-based models upon which these interventions are predicated. It is argued that all young people are, by definition, ‘at risk’ of problem outcomes due to their relative powerlessness in society; exemplified by the adult presumption/prescription of salient risks and the subsequent imposition of responses underpinned by these factors. However, the article concludes that, far from being rejected, the risk factor approach should be retained and utilized through a re-orientation towards risks identified through qualitative research with young people and a simultaneous emphasis upon factors which enable young people to thrive and develop. The pursuit of ‘causes’ and ‘predictors’ of youth offending is eschewed in favour of a re-conception of salient factors as ‘correlates’ and ‘indicators’ of potential behaviours -both ‘good’ and ‘bad’, which can then be utilized to supplement further qualitative research and, crucially, the explicit involvement of young people through consultation and participation processes shaping their futures.