ABSTRACT
Until recently, interventions aiming to reduce youth disaffection have been surrounded by a considerable degree of pessimism. For many years, the conventional wisdom within criminology, penology, psychology and social work was that ‘nothing works’. Over the last fifteen years or so, however, there has been a significant shift in thinking. Mair (1991: 7) expressed early dissatisfaction with the received view when he declared that ‘For an emperor which has been scantily clad, “Nothing Works” has had a long reign.’ Over the next few years the evidence which had given rise to the idea that nothing works was called into question and a substantial amount of counter-evidence was produced. By the mid-1990s, the focus had moved on to ‘What Works?’ and commentators were able to argue, with some confidence, that ‘Across the range of evidence now bearing on this point, a number of features emerge with sufficient consistency for it now to be possible to identify ingredients of effective intervention programmes’ (McGuire and Priestley 1995: 4).
