IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i2p854-d723244.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contextualising Youth Justice Interventions: Making the Case for Realist Synthesis

Author

Listed:
  • Charlie E. Sutton

    (School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TT, UK)

  • Mark Monaghan

    (School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, Muirhead Tower, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK)

  • Stephen Case

    (School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TT, UK)

  • Joanne Greenhalgh

    (School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK)

  • Judy Wright

    (Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK)

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’.

Suggested Citation

  • Charlie E. Sutton & Mark Monaghan & Stephen Case & Joanne Greenhalgh & Judy Wright, 2022. "Contextualising Youth Justice Interventions: Making the Case for Realist Synthesis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-17, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:854-:d:723244
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/2/854/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/2/854/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:854-:d:723244. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.