The final warning

Abstract

Findings from the Home Office funded evaluation of the Pilot Youth Offending Teams, whose work preceded the full introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, will be considered in this article. More specifically, the article analyses data from the evaluation of the introduction of the final warning. It is argued that academics’ criticisms of the final warning have been premature. A notion of social action has been absent from their critiques. They have failed to make a distinction between law and policy as they are written and law and policy in action. Final warning provisions have been refracted through the assumptions of the police and of youth justice workers, whose working cultures differ from the assumptions of the Act and Home Office guidance.