Youth Crime

This paper is the 1st Chapter of the book Youth and Crime, named Youth Crime - Representations, Discourses and Data The Chapter examines: • the concepts of ‘crime’, ‘youth’, ‘criminalization’ and ‘social construction’; • how young people have come to be regarded as a threat; • how the ‘problem of youth’ is frequently collapsed into the problem of crime and disorder; • how young people are represented in media and political discourses; • the reliability of statistical measures of youth offending; • the gendered nature of offending; • the relationship between gangs and violent crime; • the relationship between drug use and criminality.