ABSTRACT
This chapter draws the book to its conclusion both by reflecting upon our key lines of argument and analysis and by addressing some of the ways in which we have come to understand the prospects for youth justice and penality. We reflect on the complexities of comparative research, the manner in which youth ‘justice’ and penality – as a mode of governance – is permeated with injustices, and we appraise public representation(s) of ‘young offenders’ by exploring a diversity of images and effects that depart from, and disturb, more conventional unidimensional accounts. In looking to the future, and speculating about prospects, we return to the intrinsically contingent nature of youth justice and penality within a context of both certainties and uncertainties and we re-engage with our three principal levels of analysis: the global, the inter-national and the intra-national. The prospects of synthesising global human rights standards and inter-national knowledge bases are considered, and pioneering approaches at the sub-national level are reviewed.
