Risky individuals, risky families or risky societies?

Abstract

In a telling moment in his speech to the Labour Party Conference in September2009 Gordon Brown turned his fire on families ‘playing by different rules or no rules at all’. Most parents, he observed,‘do a great job – but there are those who let their kids run riot and I'm not prepared to accept it as simply part of life.’ The Prime Minister went on to promise that ‘every one of the 50,000 most chaotic families will be part of a family intervention project’, a ‘tough love, no nonsense approach with help for those who want to change and proper penalties for those who don't or won't’ (Brown, 2009).

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Notes on contributors

Richard Garside

Richard Garside is director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies