Young Offenders

Deciding to base your dissertation on young offenders could be a very exciting topic. If you are struggling to decide on a topic, these examples may help:

Example young offenders dissertation topic 1:

The integration of mediation into the prosecution of young offenders

Mediation is extremely popular in resolving family disputes, mainly because of its diffusion of aggressive tactics and its reluctance to apportion blame to any single party but to work towards an end goal which benefits all parties. For the past decade mediation had been used, formally, to address youth offending and attempt to heal the wounds of both the victim and offender. Historically, native aboriginals in the US or Australia, for example, have used mediation to settle conflicts between offenders and victims in order to reduce the branding of people as ‘bad’ and address the true problems behind offending. This dissertation looks at whether the attempts to use mediation for youth offenders has been successful and to what extent mediation has a permanent place in the criminal justice system.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Baldry, A and Scardaccione, G ‘Victim and Offender Mediation in the Juvenile Justice System’ in Psychology and Law in a Changing World: New Trends, in Theory, Practice and Research (Routledge 2013)
• Doak, J and O’Mahony, D ‘Developing Mediation and Restorative Justice for Young Offenders across Europe’ [2010] 4(36) SchriftenzumStrafvollzug, Jugendstrafrecht und zurKriminologie 1691
• Sawyer, B An Evaluation of the SACRO Young Offender Mediation Project (Scottish Central Research Unit 1999)