For over a decade, the Centre for Justice Innovation has advocated for the wider use of youth diversion and has worked to provide evidence and support its use in practice. Many of the changes we called for are now visible in national policy and practice: diversion is more firmly embedded within a child-first approach, the evidence base has grown, and the Youth Justice Board has published the first national statistics on diversionary outcomes involving youth justice services.
This briefing looks back on that journey and the Centre's contribution to it, from our early work making the case for expanding diversion, through calls for stronger national leadership and better data, to more recent work on implementation, inequalities in access and alternatives to admissions-based diversion. It sets out our priorities for the next phase of reform: making access to diversion more consistent, holding agencies to account for disproportionate access, widening access without weakening accountability, building the evidence base to drive quality and equity, and continuing to invest in implementation, so that diversion delivers better and fairer outcomes for every child.