Involvement in offending behavior is for many a merely transitional stage in life to a later predominantly law-abiding and materially satisfactory existence. For a small minority of young people involvement in ongoing offending behavior is, on the other hand, a real and serious problem. This text departs from the orthodox critical criminological account of young people, crime, and youth justice and adopts a left realist perspective. This approach recognizes the need to deal with the problematic actions of individuals and the conditions which encourage those behaviors. The book is divided into three parts. The first part traces the development of young people from their social construction as children and adolescents; considers attempts to educate, discipline, control, and construct them in the interests of a myriad of different interest groups; and examines their deviance, offending behavior, and the consequential societal response, from the beginnings of industrial modernity, to the present-day morally uncertain, fragmented, nonconfident modernity or post-modern condition. The second part considers the various criminological explanations and the relevant empirical evidence to support these, of why it is that young people offend. The third part of the book examines the origins, foundations, implementation, and parameters of the contemporary youth justice system. There is a discussion of the rise of ‘New Labor’ and its commitment to communitarianism, the risk society thesis, the new public management, the audit society, effective and evidence-based practice, the work of the contemporary youth justice system, and the concerns expressed by researchers and commentators. The book concludes with a reconsideration of New Labor youth justice police and the implementation of the contemporary youth justice system in a wider structural context. Tables, references, author and subject indexes