Introduction

It is often claimed that, over the last decade, UK criminal justice policy has become increasingly preoccupied with the concepts of risk and public protection. Indeed, some academic and practitioner accounts now represent risk-based thinking and practices as the all-pervasive – and even dominant – force in contemporary offender management. However, during this very same period, the UK legal system experienced its most seismic shift in decades: namely, the growth of rights consciousness and claims, the passing of the 1998 Human Rights Act (1998 HRA) and an ever-expanding culture of rights adjudication. This chapter will argue that these developments are significant and deserving of increased critical scrutiny. Of course, it may be the case that public perceptions, and media representations, of the relationship between risk and rights are skewed in only one direction – inevitable conflict – and, as with the ‘war on terror’, often with deeply problematic cultural, political and social effects (Mythen and Walklate, 2006). However, instead of always making such assumptions, my argument is that it is more fruitful to explore the actual nature – and effects of co-existence – of risk and rights discourses in contemporary criminal justice settings in the UK (Murphy and Whitty, 2007).

The focus of this book is the application of the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) framework within the youth justice system. A critical scrutiny of the risk–rights relationship in this context raises some distinct, and particularly troubling, questions. As evidenced by the title of this chapter (‘MAPPA for kids’), one needs first to pause and ask: have the merits and costs of a policy of bringing children within a risk paradigm, which has been designed and generally functions with adult (male) offenders in mind, been adequately addressed (Kemshall, 2007; Nash, 2007)? This question is posed, not just because of the very different histories, cultures, practices and problems within youth and adult justice systems, but because it is possible to identify very distinctive associations between the status of children and the concepts of risk and rights respectively. In what follows, I focus on two of these: first, the role that risk plays in contemporary discourses around the child, and second, the impact of children's rights as protected by national and international law and practice. Thereafter I examine two contemporary debates – one on governance, the other on security.