In October, Prof Claire Hamilton, Professor of Criminology in the School of Law and Criminology & Dr Siobhán Buckley, Lecturer in Law at Ulster University, published an article entitled, ‘Within-case comparison of the adult and youth justice systems: New directions for a ‘fractured’ penal state?’. The article was published in the official journal of the British Society of Criminology, Criminology & Criminal Justice. It was based on doctoral research carried out by Dr. Buckley at Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology which compared the adult, young adult and youth criminal justice sectors in Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands. The research argues that cross-sectoral, as well as between-country, comparison can help to identify the critical drivers of penal policy, particularly in countries where rates of youth detention and adult imprisonment rates diverge dramatically.
Abstract
“Building on recent literature on the importance of local grounded comparison and the ‘fracturing’ of the penal state, this article argues that within-case comparison of the adult and youth justice systems can shed important light on the stark differences that persist in how and why we punish. Using the case of Irish youth justice to illustrate the utility of fracturing the penal state horizontally, as well as vertically, we argue that this provides a helpful lens for making sense of the drivers of penal policy, especially the historical particularities of any penal phenomenon.”
Read the article in full here