Youth Justice and Crime

This unit focusses on a specific aspect of the criminal justice system, offering students an opportunity for close analytical engagement with the laws, theories and practices pertaining to juveniles who offend. The unit will introduce and challenge students to understand the laws pertaining to juvenile offending and the means of analysis to understand the motivations, which may result in juveniles coming into contact with the criminal justice system. As such, students will become familiar with various statutory regimes that mediate their contact across the states of Australia and also with the theoretical explanations and methodologies to understand and engage in response to this category of crime.


Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:
1. Develop an understanding and theoretically-informed perspective of the criminal genesis of juvenile crime.
2. Evaluate the effectiveness of the criminal justice system and the laws that pertain to juvenile offending through analysis, research and consultation with student research partners.
3. Evaluate the effectiveness of the criminal justice system through an analysis of law making and sentencing responses to juvenile crime.
4. Evaluate the criminal justice system in its interactions with indigenous youth.
5. Analyse and develop evidence-based recommendations for adaptions and changes to the criminal justice system as it relates to juvenile crime.