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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.

Global evidence suggests a potential displacement of youth offending from the physical to the digital landscape, requiring revision of existing detection and intervention methods. This study aims to explore pathways from harmful to illegal online activity perpetrated by young people, legislation and police perspectives, current detection methods and interventions.

This perspective paper examines issues observed within a larger systematic literature review on digital youth offending.

A trajectory from acceptable to harmful and subsequently illegal behaviour was identified, with a particular pathway from unethical video game activity to digitally dependent offending. Legislation and police perspectives vary by jurisdiction, with a common theme that increased officer education is key to the level of preparedness to investigate cases. Machine learning and automatic prevention show promise as detection and disruption processes, with education recommended for young people as a deterrent and redirection of skills to positive outcomes.

Recommendations for further research include a broad survey of school students to include all identified areas of digital offending, which could drive the development of targeted education by law enforcement and partner agencies for young people.

The shift in youth offending requires the justice and educational systems to adjust how they respond to youth crime. Policy and practise shifts can include further exploration of investigative hacking, education for law enforcement and educational prevention and redirection programmes aimed at youth.

The digital displacement of youth offending is a progressively emerging concept. This paper examines the current state of response from educational and law enforcement agencies and discusses the next steps based on what is currently known.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a number of the problems young people face in respect of their living arrangements and how these difficulties can impact on them and the decisions that are made when they are involved in the criminal justice system. It discusses some of the problems that have to be overcome, the role of youth offending teams and some of the initiatives that have been developed to address young people's needs.

It is a literature review based on research the author has undertaken over the last decade that incorporates the findings of other research, obtained from research reports, project evaluations, thematic inspections and contributions from the voluntary sector. It also refers to findings from analysis of Asset data. Asset is a standardised assessment tool used by youth justice practitioners in youth offending teams to identify risk factors that will be addressed in supervision of young people subject to statutory orders.

The paper summarizes information from a range of sources about the problems young people in the criminal justice system face when there are difficulties with their living arrangements. There can be additional difficulties (when compared to other vulnerable young people) because of criminal justice involvement. The paper analyses what some of these difficulties can be by describing the implications at some of the key decision‐making points of the system and explores the role of youth offending teams which do not have statutory responsibilities for providing accommodation for young people and advises that this remains a responsibility of statutory agencies, although one that is not always properly fulfilled by children's services or local authority housing departments. Legislative responsibility is clarified with reference to recent case law. The paper concludes with mention of some of some relatively recent initiatives that have been taken in relation to resettlement in particular and their findings. The article concludes that addressing housing need requires a co‐ordinated approach from youth offending teams (as brokers and advocates) and that statutory services need to fulfil their obligations or prevent offending and assist young people to lead settled lifestyles.Research limitations/implications – The paper has largely reviewed existing materials, however it adds to existing material by providing an update on more recent developments and provided a discussion of the issues as they affect young people. Some of the information obtained from examination of Assets (by the author in the conduct of research) has not previously been published and the author attributes this to Asset review. Also whilst many young people in the justice system are experiencing problems which are not within the scope of youth offending teams’ responsibilities to fully resolve – there are therefore limitations to how far discussion around this particular aspect of the analysis can be taken.

The paper is important as it reinforces the need for statutory services to fulfil their obligation to young people in housing need. It is important for those engaging with young people who have housing difficulties to be aware of their problems and vulnerabilities – which can often be forgotten as statutory agencies can have a tendency to see view them primarily as offenders and not young people in need.

The social implications of not addressing this problem are that young people with housing difficulty grow up into adults who also have housing needs and there is a greater risk of homelessness. Criminal activity contributes to homelessness and can occur as a result of homelessness. Also those with housing difficulty can potentially face more punitive sanctions from the criminal justice system because of their problems and not their actions, the biggest one being that they can lose their liberty. It is in the best interests of young people to ensure that they are living settled and law‐abiding lifestyles. Addressing housing need is an important social function in the prevention of offending.

The paper re‐visits a long‐standing problem that continues to require resolution. The paper provides a summary of the problem, indicates how it can impact on criminal justice decision making, the role of youth offending teams and some recent initiatives. It presents this information in one paper and discusses housing difficulties from the youth justice specifically, which discussion of young people and their housing difficulties may touch on but not go into in the level of depth that this article does.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a response to a recent government-commissioned review of residential care (Narey, 2016), and the subsequent government response (Department of Education (DfE), 2016), which minimises the correlation between the experience of being looked after and becoming involved in the youth justice system. The Narey review emphasises on the role of early adversity in looked after children’s offending behaviour but minimises the significance of experiences during and after care, and downplays the effect of policies and practices that may exacerbate looked after children’s involvement in the youth justice system.

The paper builds upon a systematic literature review conducted for the Prison Reform Trust (Staines, 2016) to demonstrate the extent of current knowledge about how risk factors, adverse experiences during and after care and the criminalisation of looked after children combine to increase the likelihood of involvement in criminal proceedings. The paper also highlights gaps in the research evidence, particularly in relation to gender and ethnicity.

The findings suggest that the Narey review (2016) and the government response (DfE, 2016), are misguided in their attempts to minimise the role of care in looked after children’s disproportionate representation within the youth justice system. The paper cautions against the over-simplification of a complex relationship and emphasises on the importance of recognising the intersection between different factors.

The paper uses secondary sources to develop an original argument to rebut claims within a recently published review.

Resettlement programmes provide support for young offenders during their custodial sentence and for approximately nine months after release. This article describes how the costs and benefits of providing an effective service of this kind were estimated based on the ‘RESET’ programme, published evidence on the costs of crime and the likely reduction in offending due to an intensive support programme. The cost of crime has been estimated at £46,459 per year (after allowing for a reduction due to the time spent in custody), plus prison custody at an average of £30,475 and emergency accommodation at an average of £1,106, making a total of £78,040 for each offender. Using a fairly modest assumption that good support in resettlement could lead to approximately a 35% reduction in frequency and a 10% reduction in seriousness of offending, a saving of £20,407 per offender per year could be achieved. These savings would more than offset the average cost of a good quality resettlement service of £8,074. The scheme would break even if the frequency of offending were reduced by only 20%.

This study aims to critically evaluate the trajectory of the “Child First” guiding principle for youth justice in England and Wales, which challenges adult-centric constructions of children (when they offend) as “threatening” and asserts a range of theoretical and principled assumptions about the nature of childhood and children’s evolving capacity.

Focussing on how Child First seeks to transcend the socio-historically bifurcated (polarised/dichotomised) thinking and models/strategies/frameworks of youth justice, this study examines the extent and nature of this binary thinking and its historical and contemporary influence on responses to children’s offending, latterly manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches.

Analyses identified an historical and contemporary influence on bifurcated responses to offending by children in the United Kingdom/England and Wales, subsequently manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches. Analyses also identified a contemporary, progressive challenge to bifurcated youth justice thinking, policy and practice through the “Child First” guiding principle.

By tracing the trajectory of Child First as an explicit, progressive challenge to previous youth justice thinking and formal “approaches”, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to question whether, in taking this approach, Child First represents a clean break with the past, or is just the latest in a series of strategic realignments in youth justice seeking to resolve inherent tensions between competing constructions of children and their behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to compare family group conferences (FGCs) facilitated by police officers with those facilitated by a civilian along several dimensions including process, reparation agreements, recidivism, and time until failure.

Using observational data and juvenile histories of offending from the Indianapolis Restorative Justice Project, the authors attempted to answer four research questions: Are family group conferences facilitated by police officers procedurally different from family group conferences facilitated by civilians?; Are reparation agreements resulting from police‐officer‐facilitated conferences different from reparation agreements resulting from civilian‐facilitated conferences?; Did youths who participated in police‐facilitated conferences recidivate at different rates compared with youths who participated in civilian‐facilitated conferences?; Did youths who participated in police‐facilitated conferences have a longer time to failure than youths who participated in civilian‐facilitated conferences?

Generally, there appeared to be no major differences between conferences facilitated by civilians as opposed to police officers. Observations indicated that police officers seemed to lecture offenders more during the FGC and made more suggestions as to what should be in the reparation agreement. Youths who attended police‐officer‐facilitated conferences “survived” somewhat longer before re‐offending than youths who attended civilian‐facilitated conferences, although these differences were not statistically significant.

While subjects in the Indianapolis experiment were randomly assigned to family group conferences or a “control group” diversion program, subjects were not randomly assigned to conferences according to facilitator type. This limits the generalizability of the findings.

The study suggests tjat both police officers and civilians are capable of facilitating FGCs, consistent with restorative justice principles. For police departments interested in responding proactively to early juvenile offending and in strengthening ties with the community, FGCs provide an opportunity through police officer training and involvement as conference facilitators. In contrast, in communities where the police may be disinclined to commit officers to the role of facilitator, the findings suggest that civilian facilitators can also effectively coordinate FGCs.

The study adds to the restorative justice literature by further examining conference processes and outcomes. Additionally, it offers the first empirical examination of some of the concerns that have been raised about police‐ as opposed to civilian‐facilitated conferences. The finding that there were few differences between police‐ and civilian‐run conferences suggests that the police are at least as capable as civilians in facilitating FGCs. This suggests that FGCs could be implemented as part of a community policing initiative utilizing police officers as facilitators. Similarly, FGCs could be implemented as part of a community justice initiative utilizing civilians as facilitators. The key to successful outcomes is likely to be driven by fidelity to theoretical principles as opposed to the formal role of the facilitator.

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.

Figures published by the Ministry of Justice show significant progress against New Labour's targets to reduce reoffending by young people within the youth justice system. The outgoing government was, unsurprisingly, quick to infer that such findings constituted corroboration of the improved effectiveness of youth justice practice under their administration. This article considers whether such an inference is warranted and discusses other potential explanations of the data.

This paper aims to explore how peer support can support a combined Child First, trauma-informed and restorative approach for youth justice. While other scholars have identified clashes between these approaches, particularly between Child First and restorative approaches, a focus on reparative practice with peers has been under-explored as a more child-centred model for reparation-focused work.

We draw on qualitative data from interviews and surveys undertaken with young people and parents/caregivers in a London youth offending service (YOS). The data was part of a broader mixed-methods study in the YOS that used observational methods alongside surveys and interviews to evaluate the effectiveness of its model of practice. Peer support emerged as a theme.

Participants expressed the desire to see young people working and volunteering in the YOS and felt this would help make it a safe and non-threatening space. Young people who had completed their time with the YOS saw themselves as role models with the insight and skills to support others. These young people expressed a strong desire to work in the YOS and, in some cases, to develop long-term careers supporting young people.

Our research challenges the notion that young people who have been involved in crime struggle to empathise, providing rich examples of their empathic understanding for peers. Peer support opportunities could offer a reconceptualisation of restorative practice that is Child First and trauma-informed. Such opportunities would benefit both the young people being supported and those offering support, building a co-produced approach that is directly informed by the expressed needs and desires of the young people.