Citation

Sutton CE, Monaghan M, Case S, Greenhalgh J, Wright J. Sustainability (Basel) 2022; 14(2): e854.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/su14020854

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article examines the problematic reductionism and decontextualising nature of hegemonic youth justice intervention evaluation and offers a way ahead for a realistic, context-sensitive approach to intervention evaluation in the youth justice field. It opens by considering how the development of risk-based youth justice interventions in England and Wales flowed from and fed into the modernisation and resultant partiality of the 'evidence-base', which shaped youth justice practice. It then moves to a critical review of the emergence and continued influence of risk-based interventions and the 'What Works' intervention evaluation framework in youth justice. In the closing discussion, this article envisages the potential of taking a realist approach to the evaluation of youth justice interventions to mitigate the limitations of current approaches to intervention selection and the evaluation of their 'effectiveness'.

Keywords: Juvenile justice

Language: en