ABSTRACT
Youth justice in the UK is linked very strongly to a theory of risk and protection, which has seen the identifi cation by researchers of many risk factors for young people’s entry into offending and subsequent persistence in it. There is also a set of identifi ed protective factors that have been deemed infl uential in young people’s resistance to criminal activity and desistence from it, once begun. These risk and protective factors form the basis of the assessment processes that are currently undertaken for all young people entering the criminal justice system (or the Children’s Hearings system in Scotland).
