Youth Violence and Serious Crime: Innovations and Future Directions for Theory, Research and Practice
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Social Psychology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 February 2026 | Viewed by 167
Special Issue Editors
Interests: youth violence; child criminal exploitation; prevention
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Serious youth violence and higher-harm crime in the community is a perennial issue of global significance and impact. Across disciplines, academic research has helped to us to estimate prevalence and capture the impact of exposure, illustrating the different experiences of young people. We now know, with significant confidence, that only a minority of youth are involved in the most serious and persistent violent and harmful offending. Increasing policy attention, driven in part by high-profile and serious violence, sometimes alongside adults, has contributed to the commissioning and evaluation of new innovations in the community.
Despite several decades of this interest in the prevention of youth violence and high-harm crime, recent evidence synthesis and scoping studies have illustrated that—while there have indeed been advances for those at general risk (universal provision), and for those on the periphery of serious violent crime (secondary interventions)—there exists a paucity of evidence-based programmes for young people in the most complex situations and who are engaged in the most serious violent, and often organised, criminal behaviour (tertiary interventions).
This Special Issue will explore new conceptual framing, salient theory, innovations in practice, and advances in research methods for this population of young people most involved in serious crime and violence, and most vulnerable to criminal exploitation. We therefore welcome creative and novel primary research works (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods) and practically oriented insights on the above mentioned topics. Necessary breakthrough development is the reason that we are not calling for evidence reviews or syntheses of extant evidence.
Dr. Colm Walsh
Dr. Sean Redmond
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- community violence
- criminal exploitation
- crime prevention
- prevention theory
- youth violence
- youth crime
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