Youth Justice

Deprivation of liberty has historically been a common response to juvenile offending, but since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), it should be a measure of last resort. A key right in this context is the right to complain, which is crucial for making youth institutions more humane and child friendly. Despite this right to complain being recognized since more than three decades, research on how youths experience deprivation and how the complaint process functions, remains limited. This article first explores the legal significance of the right to complain for young people deprived of liberty, alongside the observation that, as with many other children’s rights, its implementation frequently falls short of expectations. Then, we present our research methodology, emphasizing the value of participatory observations and interviews conducted with professionals and young people directly engaged with the complaints process. Third, we report findings from our empirical study conducted in a Flemish youth institution in 2015 and 2016, before the introduction of a regulated complain mechanism. Fourth, we illustrate how the formal legal introduction of the right to complain at the end of 2017, alongside the mandated presence of monthly commissioners and a supervisory commission, significantly transformed the functioning of complaint procedures in closed youth facilities. Fifth, we reflect on the sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the exercise of this right within youth facilities during 2020 and 2021 and the further evolution of this right until 2024. The article concludes by stressing the need for an empirically informed children’s rights perspective and calls for activist research to treat the right to complain as a “transformative right,” enabling systemic change in juvenile detention practices.

Juvenile recidivism is a global issue. Yet, academic studies disproportionately address juvenile crime in high-income countries; this historical focus leads to a self-perpetuating cycle in which new research prioritizes existing knowledge bases that may overlook risk and protective factors unique to low- and middle-income nations, such as Zambia, where research on the root causes of juvenile recidivism remains sparse. This study points to the potential shortfalls of generalized approaches to juvenile rehabilitation by privileging the voices of young offenders in Zambia whose stories highlight the devastating impact of family dysfunction, the erosion of traditional community, and socioeconomic inequalities, including poverty, lack of educational opportunities, high youth unemployment, on their behaviors. Their voices, largely unheard in the nascent Zambian literature on juvenile crime, provide a roadmap for reducing recidivism by developing community-based programs that prioritize strengthening family and community bonds while alleviating systemic challenges to rehabilitation.

The study aimed to analyze and evaluate interventions for improving resilience and/or well-being of youth incarcerated. A systematic literature review was conducted using the PICO approach, PRISMA protocol, and narrative synthesis. From 5962 articles, 26 met the inclusion criteria. Of these, six interventions enhanced resilience, while 18 improved well-being. The Expressive Writing Intervention (WRITE ON) demonstrated strong effectiveness for resilience, whereas Group Therapy and the Violence-Prevention Program showed notable benefits for well-being. Each intervention revealed strengths and limitations based on research and implementation evaluations. Although valuable insights were gained, the study could not provide conclusive evidence regarding overall adequacy.

Despite the United Kingdom’s robust child protection policies and approaches to modern slavery, no specific UK-wide policy addresses the criminal exploitation of children. This paper presents multi-agency focus group and survey findings from a commissioned study which examined the adoption of policy and practice in Wales. Rather than a Wales-led, child-rights national framework, participants encountered inconsistency between a preponderance and absence of relevant guidance from the United Kingdom and Wales. Participants wanted the separation of criminal exploitation from the Modern Slavery Act 2015, a legal definition and amendment of the Children Acts 1989 and 2004 to include exploitation as a separate category of child abuse.

Traditional juvenile justice approaches in the United States have failed to adequately consider adolescent developmental needs and broader social contexts, potentially undermining healthy psychosocial development. In response, the juvenile justice system has been working toward a significant shift to developmentally informed approaches, including in a midwestern urban county in the United States, where prosecutors and others have been trained on bringing the science of adolescence into their decision-making. Yet limited research exists on how practitioners operationalize these principles in practice. This qualitative study examines how practitioners in juvenile justice understand and apply concepts of adolescent development and restorative justice when determining accountability pathways for youth. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six members of the Collaborative Review Team (CRT), a group of diverse decision-making practitioners (i.e. community members, public defenders, and assistant county attorneys) who make decisions about youth cases. The results from qualitative analysis indicate a gap between theoretical knowledge and application in practice. Analysis also indicated a nuanced and complex approach to assessing need and harm. Participants emphasized the necessity of examining each youth’s individual background, stressing the importance of understanding the environmental influences affecting decision-making processes. Another recurring theme underscored disparate access to information and information gaps related to the assessment of need; participants often relied on professional experience to fill these holes, speculating or making inferences about the type and acuity of need. Results from this research are particularly timely as jurisdictions across the United States increasingly adopt models that balance accountability with developmental science and restorative approaches.

This article examines how Vietnamese courts adjudicate sexual offences involving juvenile defendants under a strict liability regime governing sexual acts with children under 13. Drawing on qualitative analysis of 86 judicial decisions, it identifies recurring narrative patterns through which courts construct relationships, interpret adolescent conduct, and produce victimhood. The analysis shows that judicial reasoning systematically reintroduces developmental and relational context into a legal framework that formally excludes consent, while representations of victim innocence sustain the law’s protective logic. References to remorse position sentencing as pedagogical rather than purely punitive. The article argues that adjudication operates as a site of mediation in which rigid legal classification is applied through interpretive practices that partially accommodate developmental realities without altering doctrinal boundaries. In doing so, it demonstrates how tensions between strict liability and developmental interpretation are managed through narrative reasoning in the absence of structural differentiation.

Youth-produced sexual imagery, commonly referred to as ‘sexting’, is criminalised under legislation relating to indecent images of children. Interviews with youth offending team (YOT) practitioners demonstrate that their understanding and responses to youth sexting are rooted in assumptions about its harms and ‘inappropriateness’. Constructions of youth sexters as ‘vulnerable’ resulted in what this research terms ‘remote risks’, such as exploitation by adult strangers, being reconceptualised as the ‘most likely’ harm, justifying the perceived need for ‘preventive’ youth justice interventions in all cases, in the name of protection. The research advocates for the decriminalisation of youth consensual sexting (at the very least) to encourage responses outside of the criminal justice system that centralise issues of privacy and consent, beyond notions of criminality.

Sport is often promoted as a vehicle through which a variety of social policy outcomes can be achieved, one of the most common of which is the prevention of crime among marginalised and disadvantaged youth populations. However, some scholars have questioned the potential of sport-based interventions to act as a ‘panacea’ for such social ills and have called for more nuanced research that examines the mechanisms within these programmes that may enable positive outcomes. Drawing upon research findings from a study of one sport-based intervention that aims to prevent young people from engaging with paramilitary or criminal networks in Northern Ireland, this article seeks to examine some of the key mechanisms within such interventions that may alleviate the propensity for young people to become involved in paramilitary and/or criminal activity. In doing so, the article seeks to reveal how sport may be used for ‘good’ within diversion/prevention strategies, highlighting how those involved in the operationalisation of sport-based interventions are critical to the harnessing of ‘the power of sport’ in terms of social integration.

The present Canadian study explored the experiences of 50 incarcerated adolescent girls and 50 incarcerated adolescent boys. Boys and girls appear to have pre-existing areas of vulnerability that may be gender specific. For both boys and girls, being incarcerated appears to have been impacted by various forms of loss, stress, and trauma, though this seemingly occurs in different ways and settings. Though both groups have high rates of psychosocial adjustment difficulties to being incarcerated (in the form of self-reported anxiety, depression, withdrawal), girls appear to have higher levels of adjustment problems, and their pre-existing vulnerabilities appear to be a stronger predictor. For boys, prison stresses appear to be a stronger predictor of adjustment to incarceration.

The Almajirai, students of traditional Quranic schools in Northern Nigeria, live apart from their families, relying on begging and minor work for survival. Often stigmatized in media and academic discourse, this study examines their severe deprivation and links to criminal behavior using mixed methodology with 800 participants. Findings reveal severe absolute deprivation in accessing basic needs, contributing to petty theft, poaching, fighting, and open defecation for survival, but substance abuse and sexual crimes are very rare. The study underscores the need for targeted policies to reduce deprivation and vulnerability among the Almajirai.

Youth involved in the Canadian criminal justice system often rely on a parent for advice and advocacy during their procession through the system. Despite the Youth Criminal Justice Act affording parents a significant role in their child’s case, there is limited evidence that parents, or adults broadly, can effectively advocate for their child. In this study, we modify an American measure of legal knowledge about youths’ rights for a Canadian audience and explore Canadian adults’ levels of knowledge. We found that adults overall had limited legal knowledge of youths’ rights, calling into question their ability to effectively overcome youths’ developmental limitations.

Procedural justice and legitimacy are increasingly recognized as central to policing. While prior research has established the justice–legitimacy link, most studies focus on general adult populations, with limited attention to system-involved individuals and even less to youth. This study examines the applicability of the process-based model by analyzing detained juveniles’ (n = 377) perceptions of procedural justice, trust and obligation to obey, and willingness to cooperate with police. Data collected from 2011 to 2013 show strong support for the framework, demonstrating that perceptions of procedural justice, trust, and obligation to obey significantly shape detained youths’ willingness to cooperate with the police.

This article explores the dynamics between structure and agency in Welsh youth justice, focusing on the discretionary power of Youth Offending Team (YOT) managers. Drawing on qualitative research with practitioners, policy actors and young people, it explores how ‘soft devolution’ and local discretion facilitate the development of bespoke, rights-based practices that diverge from their English counterparts. Framed through Mills’ sociological imagination and Giddens’ structuration theory, the article demonstrates how YOT managers translate national policy into locally grounded practice, shaping outcomes in ways that both reflect and reconfigure wider structures. The voices of young people themselves underline the stakes of this process, revealing how professional discretion can either stifle or support their aspirations for the future. The findings highlight how frontline innovation, embedded in devolved governance and rights-based legislation, can transform space for a more welfare-oriented approach to youth justice in Wales. More broadly, the study offers lessons for devolved and quasi-devolved contexts, showing how local agency can sustain meaningful reform within structurally constrained systems.

In developmental and life-course criminology, there has long been interest in the criminal career parameters of onset and persistence. No work has explored the extent to which these parameters were impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use data for 2004-born individuals in New South Wales from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) Reoffending Database (ROD) to examine how onset and persistence rates were affected. The cumulative rate of onset declined by 17 per cent compared with a cohort born 2 years earlier. We find few impacts on the persistence rate, but these offenders committed 10 per cent more property offences.

This longitudinal qualitative study explores educational and vocational goals among young females with limited delinquency in Sweden. Ten participants sentenced to youth service (aged 15–18 years) were interviewed twice over 18 months. Constant comparative and thematic analysis identified three themes: (1) hopeful futures and ordinary expectations, emphasizing stability, independence, and “normality”; (2) relational pathways, showing how family and friends shaped goals and motivation to help others; and (3) education enabling the future, highlighting education as essential capital for stability, growth, and social belonging. Over time, aspirations became more realistic yet remained optimistic, underscoring education’s role in supporting prosocial development and desistance.

This article examines the mechanisms that enable some young ex-offenders successfully desist from crime while others reoffend in Ghana’s context of challenging socioeconomic conditions and limited institutional support. Using desistance theory and interviews with former young offenders, it finds that personal agency and social support, particularly from supportive actors, are key to successful reintegration. Support that addresses offenders’ needs and enables them to pursue conventional goals, such as education and employment, fosters reform. This study informs both theory and practice in criminology by providing a nuanced understanding of the factors and processes that differentiate pathways to desistance.

Demands led by the Movement for Black Lives in the United States to defund the police in 2020 spurred a critical reassessment of anti-Blackness and police violence, particularly in schools. This study examines the perspectives of youth and community organizers who engaged in Police-Free Schools Campaigns across Los Angeles County, focusing on their redefinitions of safety and alternatives to policing. Through semi-structured interviews, this study highlights the interconnectedness of safety and care, revealing that participants advocate for community accountability, relationship building, and resource allocation as essential for a safe environment. Rejecting traditional punitive approaches, organizers emphasize safety rooted in abolitionist care, prioritizing emotional support and communal responsibility as key facets in creating safe schools. This redefinition challenges existing notions of safety, advocating for investment in supportive structures and divestment from policing within schools. By redefining safety in terms of abolitionist care, participants in this study seek to foster life-affirming schools and communities.

Children are extremely vulnerable yet often treated as adults, measured by adult-centric conceptualisations of ‘guilt’ and expected to decide on their own culpability for law infringement. In addition, system agents incentivise children to admit guilt by offering contingent support or implying further consequences for refusal, resulting in a youth justice system that exacerbates this by requiring admissions of guilt throughout the process. We explore difficulties of applying adult-centric understandings of ‘guilt’ to children through our typology of guilt, which examines responses children might give to questions of guilt and asks whether applying adult-centric notions of guilt erodes ‘Child First’ youth justice.

This article considers how the four tenets of child first youth justice are relevant to work with young adults on probation by defining and applying the concept of ‘young adult first’ probation practice. Interviews were carried out with practitioners working in a specialist young adult probation hub (n = 60) and young adults on probation (n = 35) across three phases of data collection. We use the child first ABCD framework as a lens to consider how the Hub reflects child first approaches. We conclude that the Hub provides a useful example of what ‘young adult first’ practice might look like and that such practice needs to be adapted to reflect the unique life stage of young adulthood.

As the latest and rawest branch of the hip-hop family tree, drill rap has been fraught with tension due to its violent content and ‘fact-fiction hybridity’. As digital dragnets close in on young drillers and drill-related court cases pile up, we seek to decriminalise this subgenre. We do so through the first-ever sociolinguistic analysis of the Dutch drill scene, which stimulates (digital) street literacy and more complex readings of drill as a counterweight to the default response of policing and prosecuting. Inspired by Children First, Offenders Nowhere principles, we seek to open pedagogical gateways to empower young drillers in need.