Garda Youth Diversion Projects to be expanded into every county

Garda Youth Diversion Projects are to be expanded to cover every county in the country under the new Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027, which aims to cut the number of children already engaged in crime or who at risk of doing so. Picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie

Garda Youth Diversion Projects are to be expanded to cover every county in the country under the new Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027, which aims to reduce the number of children already engaged in crime or who are at risk of doing so.

The new strategy, which is being launched on Thursday, will see a strengthening of the existing network of 105 Garda Youth Diversion Projects, alongside research-based support for its implementation and monitoring through an existing partnership with the University of Limerick.

As some areas do not currently have a GYDP service, the strategy proposes full national coverage within two years, principally by extending the operating area of existing projects, but also through a small number of new projects.

Turbulent history

Diversion programmes have had a turbulent history in recent years, including the revelation in 2019 that some young people who had committed offences had neither been through the GYDP service nor prosecuted. 

Reports by a monitoring committee have found the number of restorative cautions, in which the victim of the crime is involved, has fallen dramatically in recent years.

However, under the new strategy, developed under the guidance of an expert steering group which has been in place since early 2019, "the overall outcome intended is to reduce harm in communities (including harm to children and young people) by reducing the numbers of children and young people who engage in or are vulnerable to engagement in crime, minimising their involvement with the Criminal Justice System, [and] supporting their personal development".

Early intervention

It also proposes early intervention and engagement with more challenging children and young people whose needs may be too complex for the existing GYDP services, greater levels of family support, engagement with younger children aged eight-11 years, and work with schools to support retention of young people with challenging behaviour in the education system.

It stressed detention was a "measure of last resort" and that young people in conflict with the law will be treated as children first.

Minister of State for Law Reform James Browne, who will launch the report with Justice Minister Helen McEntee, said young people should have the benefit of a "no wrong door" experience, adding: "Ideally, we should be engaging young people at risk before they enter the justice system."

An annual update of the implementation statement will be published as well as a mid-term review of progress after three years, a move welcomed by Prof Sean Redmond, UL adjunct professor in youth justice, who said youth justice had tended to be a "Cinderella service" in recent decades.

Disadvantage and poverty

"Everything peels back to structural disadvantage and poverty," he said. 

"At the other end you are always going to get individual incidents of youth crime, but in between is where strategy exists."

He said the strategy was "based on some pretty good presumptions" and that projects conducted by researchers at UL in recent years, including with young people at risk of becoming involved in organised crime, had shown the value of implementing an evidence-based approach with the assistance of trained and committed local frontline workers.