Transcript

ROD EARLE

So this is the final session of the course and it proposes four principles that should be important to anyone interested in youth justice. They're relevant to all four jurisdictions of the UK and apply across questions of gender, race, and class that you've explored in the last three sessions.

The principles have been developed by scholars associated with the Open University in the past. And this session includes a contribution from Professor Jo Phoenix. Professor Phoenix continues the Open University tradition of innovation and imagination by proposing an even more radical response to young people's offending behaviour.

Jo suggests that abolishing the youth justice system is the most promising way of making a real difference to the lives and prospects of young people. For Jo, there's no point in separating anyone's behaviour from the social circumstances that produced it, and thus no justification for individualised responses to challenging behaviour.

Criminalisation is the problem, not the solution, according to Jo. And she proposed this in a lecture she recorded in 2019 to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Open University. "The Open University was a radical experiment," says Jo, "that many thought was just impossible. But by demanding the impossible, the possibilities grew larger. The Open University that built this course and many, many others, was the result of radical thinking, thinking out of the box." And Jo urges us to think in this radical way about youth justice.

I hope you enjoy this final week of the course, and that you found all the sessions worthwhile and interesting. There are always new questions about children and crime coming forward in the news or social issues. Completing this course will help you make better sense of them and will perhaps help you find answers and ask new questions of your own. So thank you and keep studying.