Do It Yourself: Individual Responsibility in the Dutch Juvenile Criminal Justice System

Abstract

Adding to the rich body of literature on the increased responsibility put on (juvenile) offenders, this thesis argues that the meaning of individual responsibility in the Dutch juvenile criminal justice system is less straightforward than may be assumed. Based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands it is shown how the role of individual responsibility changes amongst different sites in the juvenile criminal justice system. Moving from the youth judge, to a juvenile correctional institution, a trajectory meeting where the release of a juvenile is prepared, the probation office, and a meeting for academics, it is shown how individual responsibility is understood differently by different actors. Concluding, it is argued that without taking relational aspects into account the focus on individual responsibility is partial and unrealistic.