This thesis focuses on contemporary institutional and societal responses to the rising profile of inner-city youth gang violence to provide a recognition centred account of the retributive turn apparent in contemporary youth penal justice. The discussion is informed by the institutional determination that the inner-city gang youth belongs to a violent minority of serious offenders for whom penal administrators reserve their most punitive sanctions. Surveillance has become normalised as part of institutional aims to curtail this violent minority. In this pursuit, policing authorities are guided by an authoritative stereotype of the inner-city as a place apart, a place characterised by deviance. I seek, therefore, to explore how the focus on punitive sanctioning privileges curtailment goals ahead of concerns about dignity and respect, thus undermining the conditions of agency for the inner-city youth, in general. The analysis emphasises that relations of disrespect undermine the conditions of agency for inner-city youth as social agents. I argue this is made possible through policing surveillance practices which disrespects youths' rights and dis-esteems youth culture. To elucidate on these claims I rely on data gathered in inner-city communities in two jurisdictions: London, England and Toronto, Canada. I acquired this data through semi-structured interviews with advocates who work in the inner-city, with inner-city youth, in a civil society capacity. This data is evaluated alongside youth legislative material from both England and Canada.