By Carla McDonald-Heffernan

  The purpose of this briefing is to provide practitioners with practice principles to improve the use of out of court resolutions for young adults, aged 18–24. These good practice principles are developed in this paper through an exploration of the evidence context, current policy, case studies and lived experience research. Evidence context Young adults represent a group with increased potential for desistance, as per the age–crime curve, if the right support is in place, and if they are protected from unnecessary criminalisation. The literature highlights that this group is still in the process of maturation, with brain functions still in development, resulting in a lack of impulse control, greater susceptibility to peer influence and decreased ability to consider consequences. Social factors in this transitory period of life also mean that relationships, education pathways, employment and finances can be unstable. These elements contribute significantly to a young adult’s likelihood of offending, and thus effective support in addressing these needs and challenges lowers the likelihood of recidivism. The literature around effective practice for young adults in the justice system emphasises the importance of several key approaches. Trust and relationship-building, specially trained practitioners, provision of holistic support that includes skills and basic support through multi-agency working, and interventions tailored to intersectional needs are all central to effective practice. Policy context Out of court resolutions (OOCRs) aim to provide a proportionate response to low-level offending. The past decade has seen conditional cautions make up a growing proportion of OOCRs, a shift which has coincided with forces moving towards the two-tier OOCR framework. Conditional cautions can include rehabilitative, reparative and punitive conditions. The practice around conditional cautions differs significantly between adults and children. Needs assessments are carried out less often for adults, and the type of conditions imposed on adults is determined by the police rather than through a multiagency process. As a result of the discretion available, practices around adult conditional cautions varies significantly between police forces. Case studies The case studies explored in this briefing are examples of good practice approaches to working with young adults in the justice system. The Gateway Project is a conditional caution programme developed specifically for 18–24-year-olds. It provides useful insights into key features that create effective conditional cautions for this group including external ‘navigators’ who carry out needs assessments and adopt mentorship roles, peer group courses focused on behaviour, and tailored support. The Devon and Cornwall Enhanced Prosecution Scheme highlights the centrality of partnerships with service providers and third-sector organisations to implementing personalised interventions for young adults. The Newham Youth to Adult Probation Hub accentuates the benefit of multi-agency working and services such as mentoring, speech and language therapy and basic provisions of food and clothing in supporting young adults out of offending.

London: Centre for Court Innovation,  2025. 23p.

By Stephen Case , Kathy Hampson and Andrea Nisbet

This Child First research project was commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation to gain a greater understanding of what children think about their collaboration in youth justice decision-making processes. Participation and engagement of children in youth justice processes and practice is vital, particularly since the Youth Justice Board’s adoption of Child First justice as its guiding principle and key strategic objective. Child First is an evidence-based framework for working with children incorporating four tenets: see children as children; develop pro-social identity for positive child outcomes; collaboration with children and promoting diversion away from the justice system. The focus for this project is the third tenet, ‘collaboration with children’. Purpose Children’s voices have traditionally been neglected within youth justice policy, practice and research, which have mainly been undertaken and developed by adults for adults. Consequently this project sought to readdress this imbalance with its child-focus of facilitating children to share their genuine perspectives and experiences of their involvement in decision-making processes. The study explored children’s collaboration in decisions affecting them at allstages of the Youth Justice System and focused on four interconnected research questions relating to: collaboration understandings, collaboration objectives, collaboration effectiveness and collaboration practise development. Methodology The qualitative methodological framework of Participatory Interpretivism was chosen, which prioritises coconstructing the research with justice-involved children to ensure child-centric, Child First, co-creation of all research elements. Two different sample groups of justice-involved children were identified from a range of community and custodial settings, in order to address the research questions through participatory and cocreated methods and analyses: Project Reference Group (PRG) of justice-experienced children (n= 22) collaborating together with researchers throughout the life of the project to co-create the project design (including exploring creative methods), implementation processes and interpretation of findings, recruited from one hosting Youth Justice Service (YJS). Research Participant Children (n = 66) recruited from six geographically and institutionally diverse research sites to take part in system journey interviews and complete digital/paper diaries for reflecting on involvement within- and between-stages

of the Youth Justice System (3 x youth justice services, 2 x youth offending institutions and 1 x secure children’s home).

Summary of Findings and Discussion Findings provided a rich description and interpretation of children’s views from the PRG sessions and interviews undertaken with participant children at the research fieldwork sites. PRG session observations highlighted the development of the project methodology throughout the fieldwork to: ✓ ensure child-friendly, child appropriate ways of communicating with children about the research concepts and questions ✓ trial creative activities/methods to neutralise power dynamics and encourage engagement ✓ interpret research findings from the participant sample to provide an opportunity for children to discuss, challenge and validate emerging themes and sub-themes ✓ disseminate research findings – children chose a pre-recorded rap backing track and, using quotes from participants and their own words, recorded a full rap song in a professional studio. Participant children sample findings in relation to the research questions: ✓ identified what children considered to be the essential elements of ‘collaboration’, summarised as being encouraged to engage in respectful conversations, being spoken to appropriately, being provided with clear information and having their views considered and taken into account ✓ revealed that children wanted professionals to ask them about their aspirations, listen to what they were saying and offer support to help them to achieve their goals so they could move forward with their life ✓ indicated that effective collaboration practice needs to be based around building authentic, positive, nonhierarchical relationships with professionals who cared about them, in a comfortable environment, to facilitate the development of effective and relevant support ✓ identified the main areas for practice development which they believed would improve Child First practice as: o wanting professionals to listen to children and their ideas for improvement o acknowledging and breaking down power imbalances by creating child-friendly environments o keeping children continually informed throughout their involvement with youth justice agencies o involving children in decision

trategic and practice levels to benefit their experience and improve outcomes across the whole of the Youth Justice System. Furthermore, findings revealed that children’s experiences of Child First collaboration practice are inconsistent, with some parts of the Youth Justice System better than others. For YJSs, collaboration experiences were generally positive; within custody, it varied depending on the establishment and incentive scheme level; whilst interactions and engagement with the police, courts and children’s social care services were mostly negative. A discussion of the findings provides an overview of the main themes/sub-themes developed and an exploration of how they consolidate and extend existing knowledge related to children's collaboration and youth justice decision making and children's views of effective youth justice collaboration practice.

Loughborough, UK: Loughborough University. 2024. 130p.

Edited by Gordon Bazemore and Mara Schiff

This book, based on a large-scale research project funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides an overview of the restorative justice conferencing programs currently in operation in the United States, paying particular attention to the qualitative dimensions of this, based on interviews, focus groups and ethnographic observation. It provides an unrivalled view of restorative justice conferencing in practice, and what the people involved felt and thought about it. The book looks at four structural variations in the face-to-face form of restorative decision making: family group conferences, victim-offender mediation/dialogue, neighborhood accountability boards, peacemaking circles. The authors address two issues that have received limited research emphasis in restorative justice: the lack of clear and consistent standards, and the absence of testable theories of intervention that reflect what has become a rather diverse practice. In response the authors conclude with a proposed structure for principle-based evaluation designed to test emerging theories of restorative decision making.

Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing, 2005. 400p.