Understanding preventative intervention in youth justice

This project will explore how criminogenic (crime-causing) contextual factors influence the effectiveness of preventative interventions on youth offending.

Youth reoffending rates have remained stubbornly consistent. This suggests that existing preventative interventions have limited effectiveness. Current interventions largely target individualised, psychosocial risk factors, which can overlook and marginalise important contextual influences, such as socio-structural, situational and relational factors.

As a result, youth justice practitioners can be left with limited insight into why interventions may work for some young people and not others. Therefore, this project aims to answer the question ‘what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects, and how?’

The project uses realist methods of evaluation, using the EMMIE framework (Effect, Mechanism, Moderators, Implementation, Economic cost) and Realist Synthesis at different points, with specific evaluation activities. The project has three phases:

• Phase 1 aims to identify the programme theories underlying youth justice interventions, and the ways that wider contextual factors are thought to influence the risk of youth offending.
• Phase 2 will involve testing and refining programme theories through synthesising quantitative and qualitative evaluations of youth justice interventions using a Realist Synthesis approach.
• Phase 3 will have researchers working with stakeholders to produce actionable guidance for youth justice policymakers and practitioners, outlining how to adapt prevention-based youth justice interventions to local circumstances.

The research will make a significant contribution to a key debate within youth justice by exploring how youth justice interventions move beyond their existing focus on individual risk factors to incorporate more contextualised understanding and responses.