1. Why are children and young people frequently perceived to be the crime
problem in the UK? What are the problems with this characterization?
2. How do the different theoretical perspectives reviewed in Chapter 1 view young people who commit crime?
3. To what extent, and in what ways, has recent media coverage of paedophilia skewed the picture of sexual abuse in Britain? How do media constructions of the ‘paedophile’ differ from those of the ‘rapist’ in an earlier age?
4. How is ‘childhood’ constructed differently in other countries? Does the paedophile loom as large in the collective conscience of other nations as in the UK?
