The Youth Endowment Fund (“YEF”), in partnership with the Centre for Justice Innovation, has published a new Diversion Practice Guidance (April 2025) for police and Youth Justice Service (“YJS”) officers (the “Guidance”). The Guidance focuses on what happens to children at the early stages of the youth justice system when they first encounter the police and how to divert suitable cases away from court.
Details
The Guidance covers both informal diversion schemes (which steer children away from any formal criminal outcome) and formal out-of-court disposals (like youth cautions that avoid a court prosecution). Evidence cited in the guidance shows that diverting children from the formal criminal justice system can significantly reduce reoffending and even future violence, especially when diversion happens early (pre-charge) and for younger children (around ages 12–14). Diversion can also lead to less serious offending in the future and is often more cost-effective than formal processing through the courts.
The Diversion Practice Guidance sets out seven main recommendations for effectively implementing diversion in youth justice:
- Encourage a pro-diversion culture among all officers and staff for low-level offending: Equip the police with the knowledge, motivation and resources to effectively deliver diversion. This can be achieved by including diversion training tailored to specific police staff groups, introducing a formal process for police officers to report back on diversion engagement and outcomes, and providing a dedicated police officer to YJS.
- Develop clear eligibility criteria and ensure equitable access to diversion: Diversion eligibility should not be based solely on offence type or previous offending, and should be a holistic assessment based on the evidence base and the relevant NPCC guidance, and should account for the child’s vulnerabilities and allow for professional discretion in decision-making. Avoid criminalising children for low-level offences and ensure the diversion scheme doesn’t lead to net-widening. Disparities between ethnic groups and geographic areas on the eligibility for youth diversion scheme should be tackled and remedied. Finally, it is important to raise awareness and provide training on diversion opportunities for appropriate adults performing a safeguarding role and the children’s solicitors.
- Reduce the use of police custody for children: Children should only enter custody when necessary and for the minimum time necessary. As an alternative, the police can interview the child on a voluntary basis in accordance with the NPCC guidance (see Voluntary Interview Guidance). This helps to reduce the stigmatising impact of police custody.
- Develop a robust decision-making process with partners: Convening a joint decision-making panel comprised of key partners from the police, YJS, representatives of children’s social care and education, health services and other professionals. The NPCC’s Child Gravity Matrix is a triage tool which provides a scoring system that supports effective decision-making. The joint decision-making panel should focus on swift administration through a transparent process.
- Ensure swift access to evidence-based support: Diversion schemes are capable of reducing the police’s operational burden, and formalised referral pathways can make the referral process both simple and straightforward. Children should have access to the support required within four weeks of a referral, and the joint decision-making panel should review the efficacy of the system on a quarterly basis. Finally, it is important to increase the awareness of the police on diversion schemes and the evidence-based approaches that YJS deploys for such interventions.
- Agree a process for reviewing and closing diversion cases: Fairness and transparency in decision-making builds trust in the police and the legal system. Ensuring children understand the expectations of them and consequences of non-engagement (including implications of the outcome for their criminal record) is key to ensure procedural fairness. Agencies on the joint decision-making panel should align on what happens in the event of a child’s non-engagement. The police should provide YJS with victim information to facilitate support for victims in line with the Victim’s Code of Practice and ensure there is a clear process for victim engagement.
- Maintain high standards of diversion delivery: A scrutiny panel should review the diversion processes, decisions and outcomes, and identify good practices and insights which can be shared to further increase diversion effectiveness (see also YJB Case Management Guidance on this under ‘How to use out of Court Resolutions, Scrutiny arrangements’). Effective partnerships between the police and YJS is important both strategically and operationally, and a police representative ranked chief inspector or above should be represented on YJS management boards.
Commentary
These seven recommendations provide a framework for police and YJS teams to more effectively collaborate and deliver diversion schemes. The guidance reinforces the idea that early, tailored intervention can help achieve the central aim of the youth justice system to reduce re-offending by children while minimising the harm and disruption that formal criminal proceedings can cause to children.
Importantly, the recommendations highlight the need for professional training in order to achieve best practice in this area. YJLC resources, including our legal guide on Out of Court Disposals and professional training, including our multi-agency one day course on the diversion framework will support professionals in this regard.
However, the Guidance has a potential limitation: it repeatedly frames diversion in the context of “low-level” offending. This may deemphasize the availability of diversion schemes for more serious cases and appears somewhat at odds with other contemporary youth justice guidance and trends that favour individualised, case-by-case assessments. For example, research by the Centre for Justice Innovation suggests that having blanket exclusions based on offence type or severity can be too rigid and that flexibility should be a guiding principle. [1] The gravity or offence severity should serve only as a guideline rather than a hard rule, which makes room for professional discretion to divert children even in more serious cases. It is also worth noting that the Guidance does advise against strict criteria for diversion based “solely on offence type”. [2]
Practitioners should use their own professional discretion when using this guidance and balance the document’s best practices with the evolving ethos of youth justice – one that seeks to treat children as children, address the root causes of their behaviour, and divert them from crime in a proportionate and constructive manner.
[1] https://justiceinnovation.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2020-02/eligibility_criteria_briefing.pdf.
[2] https://justiceinnovation.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2020-02/eligibility_criteria_briefing.pdf.