Transforming Youth Justice: International Perspectives and Approaches to Youth Voice and Participation

Dear Colleagues,

Youth justice can be distinguished from juvenile crime by its particular focus on how the criminal justice process is constructed and implemented in relation to young people whose behaviour is considered antisocial or unlawful (Creaney & Smith, 2020; Ashton & Bussu, 2020; 2022a,b; Price, 2020; 2021).

Youth justice interventions are therefore significant in that they both anticipate and respond to crime and delinquent behaviour (Creaney & Smith, 2020; Ashton & Bussu, 2020; 2022a,b; Price & Truner, 2021).

This Special Issue invites empirical, conceptual, or review papers, as well as scholarly and practitioner-based research, addressing any aspect of juvenile crime and youth justice across national and international contexts (including both Western and non-Western settings).

We particularly welcome submissions exploring, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Youth voice, participation and co-production in justice processes;
• Preventive and early intervention strategies and desistance pathways;
• Diversionary practices and alternatives to formal prosecution;
• The role of restorative justice in promoting positive outcomes, including reductions in offending by children and young people;
• Disproportionality, intersectionality and systemic bias within youth justice systems (e.g., race, gender, class, disability);
• Trauma-informed and developmentally appropriate responses to youth offending;
• Comparative analyses of youth justice models across jurisdictions and cultural contexts;
• The influence of neuroscience, developmental and social psychology and child-centred frameworks on policy reform;
• The criminalisation of care-experienced youth and those in residential or institutional settings;
• Transitional justice for young people moving from youth to adult systems;

In particular, we invite papers that showcase best practice initiatives, innovative strategies and evidence-informed approaches that support and amplify youth voice within youth justice systems. We also encourage contributions that critically examine how participatory, co-productive and restorative frameworks can empower children and young people to influence interventions, service delivery and policy reform, thereby promoting more inclusive and developmentally appropriate forms of justice (Bussu et al., 2024; Creaney & Price, 2025; Price, Wilkinson & Crossley, 2023; Wilkinson, Price & Crossley, 2022).

Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary contributions that bring together the perspectives of both academics and practitioners, and that foster dialogue between research, policy and practice, are especially encouraged.

Articles should be 8,000–10,000 words in length, inclusive of references and bibliography.

Submission deadline: December 2026

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

Ashton, S-A., & Bussu, A. (2022a). The Social Dynamics of Adolescent Co-offending. Youth Justice, 23(3) 350–371.

Ashton, S. A., & Bussu, A. (2022b). “Youth Offending: an overview of the causes, implications and interventions. In Sewlyn, S. (ed). Contemporary Social Problems in the UK (pp. 147–167). Routledge.

Ashton, S-A., & Bussu, A. (2020). Peer groups, street gangs and organised crime in the narratives of adolescent male offenders. Journal of Criminal Psychology, 10 (4) 277–292.

Bussu A., Creaney S., Price J., Burn S. & Myles K. (2024). It’s a sixth sense...I see you, you see me, and we’ve been there’: Benefits and challenges of developing a peer mentoring scheme with young people in youth justice services. British Journal of Community Justice, 19(2) 4–19.

Creaney, S. & Price, J. (2025, July 18). Knowledge partnerships in youth justice: building learning and evaluative cultures. HM Inspectorate of Probation Academic Insights Paper. https://hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/document/knowledge-partnerships-in-youth-justicebuilding-learning-and-evaluative-cultures/

Creaney, S., & Smith, R. (2020). Youth justice. In The Sage Encyclopedia of children and childhood studies (Vol. 4, pp. 1720–1721). SAGE Publications.

Price, J. & Turner, J. (2021) (Custodial) spaces to grow? Adolescent development during custodial transitions, Journal of Youth Studies, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13676261.2020.1865525

Price, J. (2020). The experience of young people transitioning between youth offending services to probation services. Probation journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0264550520939166

Price, J. (2021). The impacts of the drop in staffing provision in the transition between the youth custody estate and young adult/adult estate. Prison Service Journal, 256, pp. 23–29. https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/PSJ%20256%2C%20Drop%20in%20staffing.pdf 

Price, J., Wilkinson, D. & Crossley, C. (2023). Children and young peoples’ lyrics and voices capturing their experiences within Youth Justice Services. Safer Communities. https://doi.org/10.1108/SC-08-2022-0029

Wilkinson, D., Price, J. & Crossley, C. (2022). Developing creative methodologies: using lyric writing to capture young peoples’ experiences of the youth offending services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Criminological Policy and Practice 8(2), 105–119. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRPP-10-2021-0059

Dr. Sean Creaney
Dr. Anna Bussu
Dr. Jayne Price
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Youth is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• juvenile crimes
• youth justice
• restorative justice
• trauma-informed
• youth voices
• neurosciences
• comparative analyses
• co-productions
• crime preventions