 Most modern democracies deal with children and young people who break the law through a separate justice system than that to adults. However, this has caused a problem. In the last 150 years, we've become trapped inside a recurring debate between age-related welfare issues and age-related justice issues. This is the debate, if you like, between the drive and desire to care for children and their welfare needs and to protect them versus the demand to control and punish them. My lecture is a provocation to think differently, not about the young people who occupy the system, but about our responses to them, particularly in light of everything we know about crime, justice, and the transition of youth to adulthood. The lecture poses and answers three questions. Why does age matter? Why should it matter in the production of social and criminal justice? And are there alternative visions of youth justice that can break us out of the stale and cyclical debates? I hope you can join me.