Introduction

Chapter One set out the aims of this book:

• • to provide a wide-ranging critical assessment of existing evidence about the causes of non-participation, its interpretation and its impact on policy;

• • to locate the relationship between non-participation, welfare and crime in its historical, political-economic and policy contexts in the UK;

• • to consider the effects of the global financial crisis on the relationship, set in UK and international contexts;

• • to review competing theorisations of key elements of the relationship;

• • and to establish the non-participation‒welfare‒crime relationship at the centre of critical policy analysis in the fields of social and criminal justice policies.

Parts Two and Three have pursued these aims by working beyond the two dominant traditions of youth studies summarised in Table 2.1 and across policy fields, social science disciplines and theoretical and analytical approaches (Tables Interlude.1 and 7.1). Parts Three and Four have focused on theories of governance and of criminalisation, towards developing a dedicated theorisation of the non-participation‒ welfare‒crime relationship (Table 7.1).

This final chapter has two purposes. The first, in the next section, is to review and assess the ways in which the analyses of the preceding chapters have met these aims, and the approaches by which they have done so. The second, in the final section, is to consider what the analysis might imply for future research in this field, and the need for a programme of political action.

Section 1: Review

The book is organised in four parts. Part One provides an introduction, an overview of the book’s scope and coverage, and a selective literature review. Part Two, comprising Chapters Two to Five, is focused on a critical review of research and policy concerning work, welfare and crime and their relationships to non-participation among young people. Following an Interlude which reviews Part Two, Part Three (Chapters Six and Seven) is concerned with ways in which the non-participation‒welfare‒crime relationship could be theorised differently. Part Four (Chapters Eight and Nine) considers the extent to which non-participation is becoming criminalised, and concludes with this review.

Chapter One begins by highlighting evidence of a crisis of non-participation among young people in the UK and internationally, and by identifying a parallel crisis in academic analysis of non-participation and its relationship to crime.