Measuring the dimension of social exclusion in different juvenile justice systems

Abstract

This paper presents a validated tool for comparing national crime control systems in accordance to the social exclusion they generate on those groups prone to enter into conflict with the criminal law. It is able to measure in a comprehensive manner the social exclusion caused on suspects, defendants, offenders and ex-offenders by crime control systems of diverse Western industrialized countries, in such a way that it makes possible to proceed to comparisons among the different countries. The final instrument, structured by pools, identifies nine major areas of penal intervention especially adequate to reveal relevant exclusionary effects that, as a whole, offer a comprehensive picture of the corresponding criminal justice system. One of these pools is youth criminal justice (age thresholds, treatment differentiated from adults) and it includes three punitive rules and two practices. These five items have been applied in Spain, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Poland, and two US states: California and New Yok. The results show that Spain and Poland are the two countries in this group where the social inclusion dimension is most present in their juvenile justice. The two US states stand out from the rest as having the highest number of exclusion indicators in this area.