Desistance through participatory practice: involving children in decision-making processes in youth justice

The purpose of this chapter is to explore children’s involvement in the design and delivery of youth justice services, which offers insight into how practitioners can promote children’s voices to enable desistance. The chapter will critically discuss how and why an increased focus on participatory practices in youth justice has prompted efforts to challenge power inequalities and tokenistic practices between children and professionals. Crucially, it is argued that children need to occupy a level of influence over the agenda-setting and decision-making within youth justice service processes. The chapter then proceeds to offer insight into the purpose and key features of peer support and mentorship as a form of participation which can enable desistance. This involves young people being recruited and trained to undertake peer support roles in which they can motivate, inspire, educate and advise others by sharing their lived experiences of system contact. The authors of this chapter draw on desistance literature when offering insight into how peer-led practice can be viewed as a type of pro-social approach. Following this, the chapter explores the extent to which peer-led participatory practices can be a useful mechanism to facilitate processes of desistance.