Position Paper 2023

Transdisciplinary Research for Youth Justice – Position Paper 2023 8 1. Introduction ‘Most real-life problems are multifaceted, in that they have multiple types of causes and determining factors. These different types of causes and determining factors often have to be addressed in different ways with different disciplinary methods.’ (Menken & Keestra, 2016 p. 13) The issue of preventing young people from coming into conflict with the law is one of many issues which require multiple approaches and solutions. Many academic disciplines have contributed to the knowledge we have on children and young people who come into conflict with the law. This knowledge is largely discipline-specific with a range of epistemologies and theoretical bases, underpinned by different theories and literature, based on the causes and effects of crime and offending behaviour, but with little attempt at integration. Such theories and approaches include, for example: the general theory of crime (e.g. Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Gottfredson, 2001; Hirschi, 2002) a criminological theory focused on individual low self-control as the cause of crime; the critical theory of crime (Quinney, 2001) where crime is a response to the inequalities in power and material well-being in society; the developmental or life course theory of crime (e.g. Sampson & Groves, 1989; Moffitt, 1993; Piquero & Moffitt, 2014) where developmental aspects interact with environmental challenges and cause crime; the social learning theory (e.g. Akers, 1977, 1979, 2010) where crime is learnt from those in the social environment; the rational choice theory (e.g. Cornish & Clarke, 2014) where an individual weighs up the costs and benefits of crime before committing it and; the proponents of individual or biological causes of crime (e.g. Glueck, & Glueck, 1968) which posit that criminals are different in nature to non-criminals at an individual and biological level. These approaches come from a range of disciplines with their own associated research methodologies and subsequent interventions. Furthermore, different philosophies underpin how a society addresses youth offending and the continuing dichotomies of risk based and child friendly approaches encapsulate the welfare vs justice tensions that have dominated the latter part of the 20th Century and into current times. A synthesis of these different strands is challenging. However, according to critical realist philosopher Bhaskar (1978), exploring multiple perspectives enables a deeper and a multi-layered understanding of a phenomenon. Therefore, a consideration from a range of approaches and disciplines is appropriate and actually useful.