Introduction
The Research ‘Keeping Youth Away from Crime: Searching for Best European Practices’ has given priority to the protection of children's rights in all cases, and in particular when a child is at risk of presenting criminal behaviours and entering in contact with the justice system.
‘Keeping Youth Away from Crime: Searching for Best European Practices’ has been based on a wide partnership which includes representatives from civil society, academics as well as state and local authorities, all of whom shared a common understanding of the importance that early prevention holds.
The research was divided into several consecutive parts:
1. Comparative study led in various European Member States (Austria, Belgium, England, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Sweden, and Wales) in order to gather examples of innovative methods, tools and practices.
2. Implementation of best practices and tools (specialists develop networks during the Project to strengthen the understanding of each good practice, tool or method from the European study and decide whether to implement them in the pilot places).
3. Three pilot projects in Latvia (Saldus, Cēsis and Madona municipalities) which implement the good practices, tools and methods for the work with children.
4. Public education campaign including educational film on the course of the Project activities.
Thanks to this research it has been identified good practices in early prevention in 10 European countries presented in a European comparative analysis. From this basis, project partners have organised training sessions for specialists on children’s rights and representatives of public authorities. This initiative allowed the development of a network of practitioners and researchers for future cooperation.
As main outputs, project partners have worked on 3 trainings and 2 workshops for professionals, and a Final Conference in Brussels during the IJJO International Conference, with more than 300 participants from around 50 countries. Finally, as result of this research it has been developed a Comparative analysis and a report based on Scientific-practical European field studies, report which has been translated in 3 national languages. An educational film has been produced as well to disseminate the research results.
