Policy and practice developments in the field of youth justice have become highly politicised across the UK. The growing demand for greater transparency of outcomes sets new challenges for practitioners who have to marry direction from research with practice experience. A better dialogue is needed between practitioners and researchers to support the generation of a wide range of meaningful data on what is likely to be effective, with whom and in what situations. This paper examines issues of responding effectively to youth crime by drawing key messages from the research literature.
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