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This paper aims to provide reflective practice insights on the use of the participatory approaches of World Café and Forum Theatre as crime prevention education and research tools with young people and young adults through a social learning theory lens.

Four independent case-studies showcase World Café and Forum Theatre methodology. World Café events investigated new psychoactive substances (NPS) awareness with young hostel users and college pupils (N = 22) and race hate crime with school and college pupils (N = 57). Forum Theatre events explored loan shark crime with college and university students (N = 46) and domestic abuse crime with young hostel users and college and university students (N = 28). Anonymous survey data produced qualitative and descriptive statistical data.

Learning impacts from participatory crime prevention education and research events were evidenced. Participatory approaches were perceived positively, although large group discussion-based methodologies may not suit all young people or all criminological topics.

Participatory approaches of World Café and Forum Theatre are vehicles for social learning and crime prevention with young people and young adults; eliciting crime victimisation data; and generating personal solutions alongside wider policy and practice improvement suggestions. Whilst World Café elicited greater lived experience accounts providing peer-level social learning, Forum Theatre provided crucial visual role modelling for communicating safeguarding messages.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the discourses of risk, prevention and early intervention, with particular reference, to the treatment of girls in the contemporary Youth Justice System.

The paper has two broad objectives: first, the paper reviews the literature on early intervention and youth crime prevention policy. Second, the paper focuses on youth justice practice in relation to girls who are engaged in youth justice processes or “at risk” of criminal involvement.

The paper argues that: girls are drawn into the system for welfare rather than crime‐related matters; and youth justice policy and practice seems to negate girls' gender‐specific needs. Moreover, the paper highlights research evidence and practice‐based experience, and contends that youth justice policy and practice must be re‐developed in favour of incorporating gender‐specific, child and young person centred practices.

The results presented in this article will be particularly pertinent to policy makers, educators and practitioners in the sphere of youth justice, especially since the contemporary youth justice system, in its rigorous, actuarial pursuance of risk management, fails to distinguish between “genders” within its formulaic assessment documentation.

Global evidence suggests that youth offending has reduced; however, this study aims to suggest a more complex picture, with youth crime potentially being displaced to the digital space. Historically, young people and crime have been synonymous with public spaces and being visible. A shift or expansion to online offending requires revision of how the justice and educational systems respond to youth offending.

A systematic literature review explored keywords related to age, digital offence or harm and criminal or harmful nature, using a search, appraisal, synthesis and analysis framework.

Three emergent areas of digital youth crime are discussed: digitally assisted crime, digitally dependent crime and digital harm.

The shift in youth offending requires response adjustment from prevention to detection. Opportunities may exist to disrupt or redirect youth before they offend. Further data specific to digital offending is needed. These findings seek to provide a possible direction for future research.

The concept of digital displacement of youth offending is progressively emerging. This paper examines types of offending categorised into three areas of interest.

This study aims to examine the extent to which “What Works” reviews in youth justice enable understanding of the features of effectiveness (what works, for whom, in what circumstances and why?) specified in the Effects–Mechanisms–Moderators–Implementation–Economic cost (EMMIE) framework.

The EMMIE framework examined findings within a sample of “What Works” style reviews of preventative youth justice intervention effectiveness.

“What Works” style reviews of evaluations of preventative youth justice interventions often omit the requisite details required to examine all of the necessary elements of effectiveness contained within the EMMIE framework. While effectiveness measures were typically provided, the dominant evaluation evidence-base struggles to consider moderators of effect, mechanisms of change, implementation differences and cost-effectiveness. Therefore, “What Works” samples cannot facilitate sufficient understanding of “what works for whom, in what circumstances and why?”. The authors argue that Realist Synthesis can fill this gap and shed light on the contexts that shape the mechanisms through which youth justice interventions work.

The authors extended the approach adopted by an earlier review of effectiveness reviews (Tompson et al., 2020), considering more recent reviews of the effectiveness of preventative interventions using the EMMIE framework. Unlike previous reviews, the authors prioritised the utility of the EMMIE framework for assessing the factors affecting the effectiveness of preventative interventions in youth justice.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of the origins, rationale and ways of working of the Danish schools, social services, police (SSP) system.

Narrative account of origins and contexts and discussion of implications for other nations and contribution to knowledge of prevention work.

The SSP system represents an involvement by Danish state institutions in the welfare and development of young people. Practice indicates its broad acceptance by parents, young people and professionals. Recent extension of SSP work is demonstrating some of the limitations of the approach in working with alienated young people.

The present SSP system relies on local evaluation and assessment. Wider national and longitudinal evaluation needs further consideration.

The need for a career structure and continuing and nationally consistent professional development opportunities was identified in a previous evaluation.

SSP enjoys broad acceptance amongst parents, young people and professionals in that it provides a universal input into young people’s well-being and social integration. It is proving less successful in work in some urban areas with high levels of alienation amongst older young people. There is also a need for re-statement of confidentiality aspects.

The paper provides an insight into and overview of a cross-disciplinary approach to young people’s development and well-being where the state plays a key and accepted role. The rationale is equally relevant to the UK and other countries.

In 2010, “The Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour” published a major report. This paper critically assesses the report by placing it within a context of juvenile/youth justice policy reform extending over the last 50 years.

The paper is based upon national and international policy analysis and comparative research.

In recent years the persistent politicisation of youth crime and an obsession with “tough” responses to child offenders in England and Wales have produced one of the most problematic youth justice regimes in the Western world. Against this backdrop the report of the Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour is designed to influence policy reform. By drawing on an international evidence base, this paper assesses the merits of the Commission's proposals and the extent to which they signify a “fresh start” or a “false dawn”.

The paper argues that international evidence, alongside the provisions of both global and pan‐European human rights standards, provides a compelling case for raising the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales, for developing youth justice policy and practice in accordance with the principle of minimum necessary intervention and for abolishing prison service and private sector penal custody for children and young people.

The youth justice system in England and Wales has been subjected to numerous transformations since 1997 under New Labour governments. Most approaches to the field during the period under review address the fine details of what is a politically and organisationally modernised domain. Even though this paper steps inside the system to observe some of its transformative developments, it aims to begin at the other end which enables a more rounded sociological approach to youth justice under New Labour to emerge which facilitates the production of a more detailed evaluation and understanding of the field.

This other‐end approach draws upon two main bodies of sociological theory, namely, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, which are put to work to enrich the analysis. It should be made clear that the main concern is not to produce a blueprint for a new youth justice system, but rather to draw attention to some exploratory and explanatory tools to evaluate the period under New Labour from 1997 to 2010.

Since 1997, the focus of the youth justice system has been placed upon individual and family responsibility, tougher on crime than its causes, and the creation of more efficient systems management. Furthermore, youth and criminal justice has been preoccupied with risk assessment and prediction. This has resulted in a system that is ambiguous in terms of what it is trying to achieve.

The main concern is not to sketch a blueprint for the future, but rather to analyse features of youth justice to which these theoretical and sociological traditions of Weber and Durkheim are explored in order to explain the complex dynamics of youth justice make a substantive contribution by enlarging our critical understanding.