Reading Between the Lines examines the ways in which people in New Zealand public institutions talked about youth crime in the 2002 election year. During 2002, people often used ideas of risk and development to construct youth committing crime as effects of psychological risk factors who needed controlling through adult intervention. Reading Between the Lines questions this reasoning by discussing the negative implications of such constructions and arguing for a different way to talk about youth crime, developed from Michel Foucault?s theory of resistance, which gives some agency to young people.