CYP Now - Stories of 'lifetime Neets' will often end in tragedy

A European conference was held in Bucharest last month to consider the plight and position of those young people who have been dreadfully labelled as "Neets" - although there is nothing wrong with being concerned about young people who have been excluded from, or dropped out of, education, training and employment.

At almost the same time one of the Milltown Boys, a group I have studied for 40 years, was found dead in his flat. He had been a central actor - in fact, the first one I met - in my lifelong research on a group of young people who would these days be depicted as early school-leavers and in conflict with the law. Indeed, he was one of the five boys portrayed in detail in my 1981 book Five Years, which considered the boys' transitions between the ages of 13 and 18. I wrote more about him in the mid-1980s, when starting to think about young adults who were "trapped as teenagers". And he featured prominently in my 2004 book The Milltown Boys Revisited, reflecting on their lives at the age of 40. He is the first of the core five to die.

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