This article outlines a social-ecological approach to understanding young people’s prolific offending and effective youth justice responses to it. Seeing young people through the lens of interactions and relationships – with family, peers, community and the broader socio-cultural-political context – gives insight into the type of interventions that can most effectively disrupt their offending and enhance their wellbeing. These insights have implications for the way in which youth offending teams engage with young people, in their social context, to bring about positive change in their lives. Effective interventions, we argue, focus on engaging young people in normalising relationships, over time.
Youth justice settings should provide a safe, therapeutic environment and tailored approach. Current custodial models rarely meet these aims; in part because a focus on security tends to outweigh an emphasis on care, which diminishes rather than encourages young people’s positive development. Drawing on the results of a three-year evaluation of reforms in the Netherlands, including small-scale, community-embedded facilities with a focus on relational security. By outlining the target population, key operational elements, and conditions for implementation, we provide guidance for custodial staff, and for managers and policymakers seeking to promote political and financial investment in effective youth justice strategies.
Current evidence about the impact of specialized sex offender treatment on reoffending remains inconsistent, drawing attention to the need to focus more on those program characteristics that potentially moderate outcome. This review considers current professional perspectives and evidence on two defining aspects of treatment: its intensity and timing. It is concluded that insufficient evidence currently exists to articulate best practice in this area and there is a pressing need to collect empirical evidence about the effectiveness of different intensity treatments offered at different stages of sentence.
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