Transcript

Professor John Muncie

These forms of risk analysis have become more and more common, particularly since the 1990s, as interest in crime prevention research and how best [to] prevent young offending has hit the top of the political agenda and as a result something of a consensus around notions of family conflict, truancy, irresponsible or lack of parenting, low intelligence and delinquent friends has sort of emerged and in particular has been propagated by the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. The problem with this type of an analysis, as various people have pointed out, is how we decipher which of those numerous variables are more pertinent with some people and at some times. We still don’t really know which are the most important risk factors. We really don’t know how they interrelate and how they react with one another. And of course the important point to stress is that what risk factor analysis is examining is a series of links or correlations between factors, not necessarily identifying what causes young offending.