Bernard Schissel
Bernard Schissel is a professor in and head of the Doctor of Social Sciences Program, Faculty of Applied and Social Sciences, Royal Roads University. He is co-editor of the first edition of Marginality and Condemnation. His research focuses on the marginal position that children and youth occupy in western democracies and how such institutions as law, education, medicine, the political economy and the military exploit children and youth in very subtle, politically acceptable and publicly endorsed ways. His most recent books are Still Blaming Children and The Legacy of School for Aboriginal People (with Terry Wotherspoon) and Marginality and Condemnation: An Introduction to Critical Criminology (with Carolyn Brooks).
He works and writes extensively in the areas of youth crime and justice, the sociology of children and youth.
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Marginality and Condemnation, 3rd Edition
A Critical Introduction to Criminology
A newly updated version of this groundbreaking, critical introductory criminology textbook. Resources available with this edition include Power Point slides and a testbank.
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About Canada: Children & Youth
Canada is a signatory on the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which guarantees the protection and care of children and youth. About Canada: Children and Youth examines each of the rights within the Canadian context – and finds Canada wanting. Schissel argues that although our expressed desire is to protect and care for our children, the reality is that young people, in Canada and around the world, often lack basic human rights. The lives of young people are steeped in abuse from the education and justice systems, exploitation by corporations, ill health and poverty. And while the hearts of Canadians go out to youth in distant countries suffering under oppressive circumstances, those same hearts often have little sympathy for the suffering of youth, particularly disadvantaged youth, within Canada. This book explores our contradictory views and argues that we must do more to ensure that the rights of the child are upheld.
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STILL Blaming Children
Youth Conduct and the Politics of Child Hating (2nd Edition)
The media-enhanced moral panic surrounding youth has continued unabated over the past two decades. Its form and substance varies, but the politics of blaming and exploiting children underlies it all. Despite the reality that rates for most youth crime have gone down, the public condemnation of youth, especially through the news media, continue unabated, and the position of children and youth in our societies is still as precarious as ever. Put bluntly, the lives of too many children and youth are fraught with potential danger. Not only are they the victims of excessive legal scrutiny and scapegoats for panic-driven public policy, but they also go off to war proportionately more than adults and they work at unskilled jobs for no benefits and insultingly low wages. Children and youth live outside the protections of human rights. STILL Blaming Children, an expanded and updated version of Blaming Children, shows how “getting tough” on young offenders ignores the reality of their lives and the reality of their misconduct. The book ends by describing more humane and mindful alternatives for youth offenders, based on the human rights our children deserve.