Youth justice and child protection has been high on the political agenda within the UK in the past decade. The Laming Inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie led to subsequent development of policy and legislation such as the publication of Every Child Matters (2003) and the implementation of the Children Act 2004, the latter requiring all agencies to work together in order to safeguard vulnerable children and provide for children's well-being.

The government's approach to youth justice, namely ‘to prevent offending by young people and children’ had at its centrepiece the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. It is notable that in the past 10 years there has been an increase in custodial sentences for young people by 90%.

This book explores various state responses to youth offending and child protection and the associated interfaces between policy and practice. A couple of chapters are dedicated to exploring different approaches to the youth justice and childcare protection interface, mainly addressing systems in Western Europe, the UK and the USA. The merits and drawbacks of integrated or separatist approaches are debated. Arguments passed include policies based on: welfare and punishment considerations; procedural rights; causation; the identification of young people and their families who are at risk; and intervention effects.

Also in the book, there is an in-depth exploration of the Children's Hearing System in Scotland, which effectively adopts an integrated approach to youth justice and child protection. It is proposed that creating parallel legal processes may have the capacity to increase criminalisation and undermine effectiveness unless part of a coherent system of youth justice and child protection. As the age of criminal responsibility differs in various countries, there may be some benefit in separating the adjudication of proof from the disposal decision, a process utilised in the Scottish Hearing System.

A key question the book poses is whether youth justice and effective interventions are best served by treating young people according to the grounds upon which they come to public attention or their individual needs.

It is proposed that a broader view of youth justice be taken, with a greater focus on restorative justice, mediation, family conferencing conflict resolution and problem solving.

An interesting chapter by David Archard on children rights and juvenile justice differentiates between participation and protection rights. He postulates that the shift to a criminal justice model for young people may be attributable to them being seen increasingly as agents, a change that can be explained by the increasing use of a participatory rights discourse.

What emerges is that arrangements regarding youth justice and child protection, whether integrated or separatist, appear in large part to be a ‘product of a series of ad hoc policies driven by political imperatives rather than having an overarching design’.

This book has certainly been thought-provoking for me as a mental health professional working with young people who are involved both with the youth justice and child protection systems in England and Wales. It has again aroused my concerns about the origins of youth policy in this area, the impact of political imperatives on this policy, the increasing criminalisation of young people, the low age of criminal responsibility within the UK and Ireland and the alarmingly increasing rate of custodial sentences imposed. Finally, it is of serious concern that despite the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (1995) formally reporting that the human rights of child prisoners in England and Wales are routinely violated, there has been little or no remedial action taken.

This book is a useful reference for all those working in criminal justice, child protection or the interface between both, including social workers, health professionals, lawyers and those involved in developing policy in this area. There is slight overemphasis on the Scottish Hearing Systems, although the author did acknowledge that the book arose following a conference entitled ‘The Scottish Children's Hearings at a Crossroads’. The book explores the rationale, impact and efficacy of current policies and processes employed in youth justice and child protection.