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The Structure Of The Literature Review: As Noted Previously In The ...


The Structure of the Literature Review:
As noted previously in the introduction, above, the literature review of this paper will not confine itself to any one particular discipline; after all, the subjects of criminology, forensic psychology, social work and, to some extent, penology are have dedicated varying proportions of their research on the issues with which this paper is concerned; namely the prevalence of mental illness in young offenders in the UK Youth Justice system, in particular those offenders currently serving custodial sentences in young offenders institutes, and practical methods for reducing this problematic phenomenon. A clear concern to any researcher conducting a multi-disciplinary literature review of this kind is that the order of the analysis is prone to be confusing; a researcher could choose to perform a separate review of the literature from each respective subject area or, alternatively, a researcher might choose to make no such division but rather separate the review into the relevant questions and under each separate heading utilize the literature from any relevant discipline in no particular order. The researcher of this paper has chosen to adopt the latter of these two approaches; he feels that to divide the review analysis according to topic area is wholly artificial, especially in light of the fact that any research or literature which will be discussed will be wholly relevant to the same issues pertaining to young offenders.
With this methodological approach in mind, the questions which this literature review will seek to discuss and, where possible, answer, are as follows:
1] What is defined as ‘mental illness' and how has this definition changed over the past 60 years?
2] How prevalent is mental illness in young offenders who are currently serving custodial sentences in young offenders' institutes in the UK?
3] To what extent is this a recent phenomenon? And to what extent is this a phenomenon which is particular to young offenders serving a sentence in a secure institution rather than to those young offenders who are serving non-custodial sentences or those young persons who have not been involved in the Youth Justice system at all?
4] Historically, how has the UK Youth Justice System responded to the problem of mental illness in young offenders who are currently serving custodial sentences in young offenders' institutes?

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