Understanding Youth Offending: Risk Factor Reserach, Policy and Practice

This volume explores the connections between the informal economy and organised crime. It poses the question of whether countries' national social and economic policies affect the form and extent of their informal economies and the extent and nature of connections with organised crime. Each of the papers has drawn upon empirical work in the countries involved (Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, transition countries in central and eastern Europe, Georgia, the Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Serbia). Together, they provide important new pointers to the ways in which states, often inadvertently, mould and shape their informal economies through their legislative, regulatory and enforcement policies.

Contents Introduction: Risk factor research 1 Examining the unresolved methodological paradoxes of risk factor research 2 The origins and development of risk factor research 3 Longitudinal risk factor research in England and Wales - Achievements, limitations and potential 4 Cross-sectional risk factor research in England and Wales - Achievements, limitations and potential 5 Hunting for the universal risk factor 6 Risk assessment in the Youth Justice System: Application without understanding? 7 Re-visiting risk factor research, policy and practice Bibliography Index