A New Start: Young adults in the criminal justice system

13 July 2009

A New Start: Young adults in the criminal justice system – Executive summary

Young adults

Open report

Are there fairer more effective ways to treat young adults in the criminal justice system? This report calls for police officers to triage young people into diversion schemes, replace short custodial sentences with community sentences, and for young adults in custody to be separate from adult prisoners and for court-decision making to consider maturity when holding young adults to account.

Publisher: T2A

prison, young adults

Raise the Bars: Co-producing practice guidance with Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller people

This Friends, Families and Travellers report summarises focus groups with 57 Romany, Gypsy and Irish Traveller young adults across 20 prisons, with recommendations for reform based on their experiences.

Criminal Justice, young adults

Behind the decline

This Centre for Crime and Justice Studies report looks at the shrinking young adult population within the criminal justice system who are experiencing increasingly harsher treatment.

May 2026