Progressive desistance practice in youth justice

In the past three decades, desistance—understanding how individuals move away from offending—has gained significant attention in research and policy, becoming an "increasingly ubiquitous" focus within the justice system (Maruna and Mann, 2019). Since 2014, concepts from desistance theory, initially developed with adult offenders in mind, have been applied to youth justice in England and Wales. This shift raises important questions about the relevance and suitability of adult-oriented desistance frameworks for children in the justice system, particularly given that much of the existing desistance evidence is rooted in adult experiences. Despite acknowledgement of the challenges of applying desistance thinking to children, there exists only a small international body of research exploring desistance pathways for children. It primarily focuses on those defined as "serious" or "persistent" offenders, limiting our understanding of how these theories might apply more broadly across the youth justice population. This creates a notable gap in research that is especially pressing as desistance thinking becomes more widely applied across the full range of youth justice interventions in England and Wales, including out-of-court disposals, which now make up nearly half of youth supervision cases. Even among children under court-ordered supervision, 85% have minimal or no recorded history of offending (Youth Justice Board/MoJ, 2025). Added to this, the evidence is that most children’s offending careers are limited to adolescence, implying that desistance for children may be more of a normative developmental process rather than an exceptional behavioural change (Moffitt, 1993).

This gap in research was considered by the National Association for Youth Justice (NAYJ) resulting in an edited collection ‘Desistance and Children: Critical Reflections from Theory, Research and Practice’ (Wigzell, Paterson-Young, and Bateman, 2024) that offers critical insight into desistance within youth justice. It is grounded in the view that children should be seen primarily as children, distinct from adults, in policy and practice. The book considered what helps children to move away from offending? To what extent is the concept and theorisation of desistance useful to explaining this during childhood and adolescence? Does the application of desistance theories risk problematising rather than normalising children’s behaviour? How is desistance thinking understood, interpreted and implemented in youth justice policy and practice? This paper draws on critical aspects of the book and an earlier article (Wigzell and Bateman, 2024), outlining reflections from existing literature on desistance, the application of desistance thinking in context, the role of care in professional relationships, socio-structural support and healthy development. This paper, as with the editorial collection, offers a diverse perspective with regard to the debate on desistance with children. Thus, the paper encompasses perspectives from those who argue that desistance should not be applied to children at all (see for example, Johns, 2024; Little and Haines, 2024), while others believe it can be relevant but critique its implementation and development specifically when it comes to children.