This book explores how young people perceive the severity of crime and delinquency. It particularly addresses whom or what they consider to be the victims of crime and delinquency, how they analyze and assess appropriate responses by the criminal justice system, as well as their place within it. The book proposes tools for developing a more elaborate and robust understanding of what constitutes crime, identifying those affected by it, and what is deemed adequate or appropriate punishment. In so doing, it offers thick description of young peoples' conceptions of and experiences with crime, delinquency, justice and law, and uses this description to interrogate the role of the state in influencing - indeed, shaping - these perceptions.

Chapter 1. The Corners of Crime: An Introduction.- Chapter 2. Pyramids, Squares and Prisms: Severity of Harm, Public Awareness and Perceptions of Severity of Harm, Power Relations and Society's Response.- Chapter 3. Red Hook, The RHCJC and Youth Courts.- Chapter 4. Red Hook Youth Court Hearings and Youth Perceptions of Criminal Severity, Justice, Law, Punishment and Remorse.- Chapter 5. Beyond Shape: An Open Conclusion.

Avi Brisman is Associate Professor in the School of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, USA. He is co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology (2013), co-editor of Environmental Crime and Social Conflict: Contemporary and Emerging Issues (2015), and co-author of Green Cultural Criminology: Constructions of Environmental Harm, Consumerism, and Resistance to Ecocide (2014).