Although rates for most youth crime have gone down, the public condemnation of children and young people in the news media and political arena continues an upward path. Punitive measures such as revocation of bail laws have resulted in rising rates of child detention. The incarceration of children, while widely identified by experts as both anathema to children’s rights and counter-productive to addressing crime, remains a knee-jerk reaction to crime and youth offending in many Australian jurisdictions. This chapter provides an overview of media discourses of penal populism and its specific targeting of and impact on children. It specifically examines how children are blamed for failing to meet expectations through the phenomenon of moral panic, where fear or prejudice against a certain group is fueled by sensationalism rarely based on fact. A comparison is made with Scottish exceptionalism, where, despite negative media narratives, a child-focused system with less punitive responses has resulted in significant reductions in offending rates and provides an evidence base for more appropriate and effective responses to children in the criminal justice system.