The budget for youth justice measures has increased increased by €14 million in the last four years.
According to figures from the Department of Justice, the budget for youth justice measures this year was €43 million.
Four years ago, in 2022, the budget for youth justice was just under €28 million.
It comes as the tragic consequences of children being involved in crime gained national coverage in recent weeks.
For most children who commit an offence, they are “diverted” into a community programme designed to help them not to offend again, rather than detention.
As of this June, nationwide coverage of youth diversion service was formally achieved in Ireland.
There are now 92 Youth Diversion Projects and four Targeted Youth Diversion projects in Ireland.
Youth Diversion Programmes (YDPs) are community-based crime prevention initiatives which seek to divert young people who have committed a crime or are at risk of committing a crime.
They generally target young people aged between 12 and 17 but there are also programmes for 8 to 11-year-olds.
Around 4,500 children were in a youth diversion project in 2024, a University of Limerick academic has said.
Dr Eoin O’Meara Daly, a research fellow in youth justice at the University of Limerick and a former youth justice worker, told RTÉ’s This Week the goal of YDPs is to keep young people out of the formalised justice system as much as possible.
Through a YDP, youth justice workers offer one-to-one services between a youth justice worker and a child at risk of offending within the setting of a community-based organisation
Chloe Timmons, a youth justice worker in Mayo, said that it was hard to know how successful the projects are because you can’t measure the crime that didn’t happen.
“It’s in the name,” she told RTÉ’s This Week. “We divert young people, so you’ll never hear about the kids that are diverted. We’ve already diverted them from crime.”
She added: “It’s extremely complex and some kids come in and work with us for three-four months and then you never see them again.” Other needs need more intense or longer-term care.
Ms Timmons works for the community-based organisation Youth Work Ireland North Connacht. The charity has four YDPs across Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim.
They serve between 80 and 100 children each year.
“Our job is to understand why these young people are offended, that they accept accountability and take responsibility for their action and learn why it was a problem,” Ms Timmons said.
Typically, a young person is referred to a YDP through garda services, such as a juvenile liaison officer or community guard, although many services as well as the child themselves can make a referral.
“We know that targeting the right young people at the right time because a lot of young people will go out of crime,” said Caroline Costello, a former youth justice worker who now lectures in ATU and is chairperson on the board of Youth Work Ireland North Connacht.
“A lot of the time [the offending child] learns their lesson from a caution,” she explained the shock was sometimes enough for the child and they didn’t need further help.
For others who may have several offences, more support is necessary.
YDPs are designed to target kids who commit moderate-level offences.
These include crimes like theft and public order offences.
As YDPs are always in a community based organisation, the youth justice worker builds relationships in contacts with the local services and schools that are interacting with the young person.
Paul Tolan, chief executive of Youth Work Ireland North Connacht said it was essential that YDPs are community based.
“We’re so well placed within the community with local needs and local knowledge in both the urban and rural parts of our region here,” he said.
“There’s the accountability part where the behaviour is challenged and the accountability is discussed but at the same time there’s support for the young person. They realise the consequences of what they have done.
“Maybe they’ve never had options before in terms of education, training or whatever it might be.
“Generally young people, will move away from offending when they have something positive to move towards.”
Although the majority of children referred to a YDP have had an interaction with An Garda Siochana. However, attendance at a YDP is voluntary, even if the child has received a formal caution.
Dr Katharina Swirak, senior lecturer at University College Cork said that voluntary participation works better than when it is coerced.
“For the majority of the kids, much softer interventions are much more effective,” Dr Swirak, explained.
“It keeps them in their communities; it keeps them near their usual social influence. near their support network. We know that any type of imprisonment sort of tends to destabilise people – children and adults.”
Youth justice workers aim to build a relationship with the young people in their charge and then teach them accountability and about the law.
A relatively new job in youth justice is court accompaniment worker, and Laura Scanlon of Youth Work Ireland North Connacht took on that role just over a year ago for the Sligo-Leitrim area.
“I’ve had so many kids who come in here, they’re on probation, but they didn’t understand what was actually been told to them,” she said.
She gave an example of two boys who were told by a judge they couldn’t loiter. Because they didn’t know what loitering was, they would walk in circles around an area.
“Which actually made them look more suspicious!” she said.
“If a young person is working within a youth diversion project, in the long run, it’s better for everybody.
“They may have committed five different offences by the time they came to us … but that may mean they haven’t committed the 20 after that that they would have done.”
There are around 1,000 children in Ireland involved in more serious crimes.
In Ireland, children are put in detention,only as a last resort.
The Greentown programme, which is still in pilot stage, has several undisclosed locations to work with young people who are involved in criminal networks and very serious crime.
Children that are involved in criminal networks have “a lot more need”, Dr O’Meara Daly said.
“It’s a very, very complex issue, so there’s a need for a lot more intensity of the intervention and a lot more people around the table to be looking at this particular type of offending,” he said.