by Carmen Robin-D’Cruz

The over-representation of children with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) in the criminal justice system is especially concerning given the particular harms that justice system involvement can have on them. Youth diversion gives children the chance to avoid both formal criminal justice processing and a criminal record, in return for the completion of community-based interventions. However, the overrepresentation of children with SEND in the justice system suggests that the diversion processes are not working for them.

This literature review summarises the evidence around SEND and youth diversion, with a focus on access and engagement.

It will be followed, in early 2024, by a research report examining how responsive diversion schemes are to those with SEND, drawing on testimony from practitioners and children themselves.

London: Centre for Court Innovation, 2023. 17p.

By HM Inspectorate of Probation (UK)

The use of out-of-court disposals (OOCDs) with young people who break the law is increasing. One OOCD is a community resolution (CR) which allows the police to deal with less serious offences in an informal way, providing a diversionary approach without formal court proceedings. This can allow young people to avoid having a criminal conviction on their record, give victims the opportunity to have their say, and provide a more efficient resolution than pursuing a criminal conviction. Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) perform a key role in the delivery of CRs, yet there remains a significant gap in knowledge about how CRs are delivered with young people. This bulletin focuses on findings from research which explored how youth offending services implement and deliver CRs in England and Wales, documenting working practices as well as key enablers and barriers to effective practice.

Research & Analysis Bulletin 2023/01 . Manchester: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2023. 40p.

By Lauren Knoth; Paige Wanner; Lijian He

This document reports on an outcome evaluation of the Washington State Aggression Replacement Training (WSART) program, conducted by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP), to evaluate recidivism outcomes for juvenile court youth. WSART is a group-based intervention for moderate- and high-risk youth with criminal charges filed in juvenile courts. The program uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques to teach youth three core components: anger control, moral reasoning, and social skills. The authors evaluated the effects of WSART in Washington State courts from 2005 to 2016. They found that, on average, WSART participants were more likely to recidivate than similar youth who did not participate in the WSART program. The authors note that differences in recidivism for WSART versus non-WSART youth were evident in nearly all subpopulations of males, including White youth, Black youth, Hispanic youth, younger youth, high-risk youth, moderate-risk youth, youth assessed using the Back On Track risk (BOT) assessment, and youth assessed with the Positive Achievement Change Tool (PACT) assessment; however, results indicated that WSART participation did reduce recidivism for females. The authors also state that they found that youth who completed the entire WSART curriculum were significantly less likely to recidivate than youth who participated but did not complete the WSART program.

Olympia, WA: Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2019. 70p.

By Richard Mendel

As The Sentencing Project documented in Why Youth Incarceration Fails: An Updated Review of the Evidence, compelling research proves that incarceration is not necessary or effective in the vast majority of delinquency cases. Rather, incarceration most often increases young people’s likelihood of returning to the justice system. Incarceration also damages young people’s future success in education and employment. Further, it exposes young people, many of whom are already traumatized, to abuse, and it contradicts the clear lessons of adolescent development research. These harms of incarceration are inflicted disproportionately on Black youth and other youth of color. Reversing America’s continuing overreliance on incarceration will require two sets of complementary reforms. First, it will require far greater use of effective alternative-to-incarceration programs for youth who have committed serious offenses and might otherwise face incarceration. Second, it will require extensive reforms to state and local youth justice systems, most of which continue to employ problematic policies and practices that can undermine the success of alternative programs and often lead to incarceration of youth who pose minimal risk to public safety. This report addresses the first challenge: What kinds of interventions can youth justice systems offer in lieu of incarceration for youth who pose a significant risk to public safety?1 Specifically, it identifies six program models that consistently produce better results than incarceration, and it details the essential characteristics required for any alternative-to-incarceration program – including homegrown programs developed by local justice system leaders and community partners – to reduce young people’s likelihood of reoffending and steer them to success.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 33p.

By   Ilya Klauzner, Suzanne Poynton, Don Weatherburn and Hamish Thorburn

Youth on Track is an early intervention scheme that was introduced in 2013 to help reduce the risk of young people re-offending. The scheme assigns young people to caseworkers for up to 12 months. Caseworkers administer interventions to the young person, including cognitive-behavioural and family interventions. They can also refer young people to external services to address criminogenic needs and engage with schools to increase attendance. Youth on Track is only available in seven sites in NSW and for young people who have never had a supervised order.
Between August 2017 and June 2020, a randomised controlled trial (RCT) was implemented to evaluate the Youth on Track program. A brief intervention called Fast Track was created as the control arm to ensure some level of treatment for all young people participating in the RCT. Fast Track was capped at six weeks of case management. Caseworkers did not deliver any structured interventions to the young person, but could refer them to external services.
We examined whether there were any differences in recidivism, education, employment, community activity, and housing outcomes between Youth on Track and Fast Track participants.

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. (Crime and Justice Bulletin No. 249).  

By  Aisha Ofori, Carmen Robin-D’Cruz, Bami Jolaoso and Stephen Whitehead

  Youth diversion is a set of informal, non-statutory practices in which children and young people are provided the opportunity to avoid a statutory out of court disposal or a court prosecution if they complete community-based interventions. It offers children and young people a crucial alternative, allowing them to avoid the damaging consequences of formal justice processing and the likelihood of becoming deeper entrenched into the youth justice system. However, at present, there are concerns that diversion is not equally available to all, potentially exacerbating the racial disparities that already mar the system. As the House of Commons Justice Select Committee reported, ‘race disproportionality is significant and fundamental, visible in every part of the youth justice system’.  Given the significant and potentially life-long harms which come with unnecessary involvement in the justice system, ensuring equal access to diversion is essential. This project explores the experiences of children and young people, some of whom had been diverted and some of whom had not, with a particular focus on how they perceived their ethnicity to have impacted the youth justice process and outcomes. Eleven children and young people currently in the youth justice system participated in face-to-face interviews about their experiences with the police, solicitors and youth justice services, and how they perceived these experiences to have been influenced by their ethnic background. This research, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, follows on from our previous project ‘Equal diversion? Racial disproportionality in youth diversion’ and is a crucial step towards expanding the limited evidence base on youth diversion in England and Wales.  

London: The Centre for Justice Innovation, 2022. 21p.

By Liz Kroboth, Sukhdip Purewal Boparai and Jonathan Heller

In 2017, Los Angeles County established an Office of Youth Diversion and Development to advance a collaboratively designed pre-booking diversion initiative that prevents youth from getting formally arrested or referred to probation during encounters with law enforcement. Human Impact Partners and the Los Angeles (LA) County Office of Youth Diversion and Development (YDD) partnered to develop this evaluation framework to assess and prevent racial inequities in this program. LA County’s pre-booking diversion program is part of a broader effort to reduce mass incarceration of Black and Brown youth . In LA County and across the US, Black and Brown youth are arrested and detained by law enforcement at disproportionately greater rates compared to White youth. Organizing by local youth advocates and policy changes at the local, state, and national level have created opportunities for community-based pre-booking diversion in LA County to reduce the excessive and unfair criminalization and incarceration of Black and Brown youth and equitably improve outcomes for youth.

Oakland, CA: Human Impact Partners, 2019. 54p.

Edited by Nancy Dowd

Children and youth become involved with the juvenile justice system at a significant rate. While some children move just as quickly out of the system and go on to live productive lives as adults, other children become enmeshed in the system, developing deeper problems and or transferring into the adult criminal justice system. Justice for Kids is a volume of work by leading academics and activists that focuses on ways to intervene at the earliest possible point to rehabilitate and redirect--to keep kids out of the system--rather than to punish and drive kids deeper. Justice for Kids presents a compelling argument for rethinking and restructuring the juvenile justice system as we know it. This unique collection explores the system’s fault lines with respect to all children, and focuses in particular on issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation that skew the system. Most importantly, it provides specific program initiatives that offer alternatives to our thinking about prevention and deterrence, with an ultimate focus on keeping kids out of the system altogether.

New York and London: New York University Press, 2011. 325p.