Introduction

Arts and culture programmes aimed at reducing youth crime often foreground relationship-building as a central mechanism of impact, yet the recognition of this impact is shaped by a range of tensions. Policymakers frequently demand robust, statistically significant evidence, which overlooks the long-term nature of relational outcomes. Arts and culture programmes often operate within these competing objectives, balancing creative expression with crime prevention. My previous research has identified the risks of instrumentalisation of the arts through responsibilising programmes which act as a form of social control (Howard 2017). Issues of tokenism and diminishing artistic value further complicate youth arts programmes specifically when interventions are grounded in deficit models that position young people as ‘problems to be fixed’ (Howard 2022a). Meaningful impact instead depends on creating genuine alternative pathways and recognising young people’s agency, supported by place-based approaches, self-organisation and community resilience.

Balancing these tensions, this article responds to the recently published systematic review: The effects of arts and culture programmes on youth crime, undertaken by the University of Manchester and commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, before considering my recent body of research on the impacts of youth music-making programmes. Finally, a call to action is made to develop a shared model of practice which centres Youth Work Music Practice for sustained funding which recognises long-term investment, and cross-sector understanding that helps criminal justice providers better recognise the value of arts and cultural programmes.

Responding to the systematic review

In August 2025, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published a rapid evidence review of the effects that arts and culture-based interventions can have on reducing youth crime. This review was conducted by Heather Smith, Jo Deakin, Charlotte Lennox and Simon Ruding from the University of Manchester and disseminated through a collaborative online session in March 2026. I was one of four academics invited to give evidence for this review due to conducting research in this area.

The review mapped current programmes, both community projects and secure settings, highlighting core components, such as mentoring, diversionary activity and safe spaces. A series of case studies are included, including Manchester’s Youth Justice Service. Within the evidence review 24 studies are considered, with the inclusion criteria of young people aged 10-21, programmes aimed at preventing or reducing crime, and programmes that use arts and culture wholly or in part. The review maps the current landscape of current arts and culture-based programmes addressing youth crime through a range of initiatives in community, secure and Youth Justice settings. Despite the dedication of skilled practitioners, the review highlighted that many of these programmes lack a cohesive and structured delivery and are disadvantaged by stop-start funding. The short-term funding of these programmes means that access and implementation are uneven, exacerbating inequality of offer, and negatively impacting the trusting relationships built.

Within the arts and youth sectors, we are perpetually weary of these short-term funding offers, which are based upon both measures of austerity and claims that evidence of impact is lacking. The youth work sector has been caught in this cycle of accountability, driven by the impact agenda for some years. The ‘impact agenda’ refers to the growing pressure on services to systematically track, measure, and demonstrate the tangible results on their interventions. Driven by funding requirements and government policy, it emphasizes quantifying social outcomes like improved mental health, employability, and educational achievement. Critiqued by de St Croix (2018), with McGimpsey (2020) and with Doherty (2025) and others, a growing emphasis on measurement and outcomes has arguably transformed what practitioners do. The systematic review goes some way to addressing this; despite echoing these claims of lack of robust evidence, the review points to the concurrent need for a robust infrastructure for the funding, development and delivery of long-term programmes. However, the review could have done more to highlight that the arts and youth sectors need the opportunity to rebuild trust in their work without having to quantify and qualify the impacts.

Clarity is needed

One of the key issues with the systematic review is the conflation of youth crime with youth violence. These are registered as different offences and impact upon a small minority of young people. For example, Youth Justice Statistics 2024-25, published in January 2026, record that 58,300 arrests of children[1] were made for notifiable offences, which accounts to 1.6% of the 5.45 million population aged 10-17 (ONS). This was a 2% decrease to the previous year. Of those arrests there were just over 8,100 child first time entrants[2]. This was a decrease of 4% compared with the previous year. These statistics show that year-on-year youth crime is declining. Within the proven offenses by children (which remained static at around 35,600), violence against the person was the largest offence group accounting for 23% of proven offences, but this was closely followed by theft and handling (14%) and possession of weapons offences (12%), highlighting the difference in crime type beyond violence. The focus, perhaps, reflects the Youth Endowment Fund’s current research agenda around youth violence, but is also a stereotyping model ‘hangover’ from the 2011 riots. The introduction of ‘knife crime’ and ‘serious youth violence’ reflect shifts in government policy towards emerging trends in violence (Watkins and Gearon 2024), but also a lack of understanding about ‘youth crime’ in general.

Also unclear from the study is whether the research included in the systematic review focused only on those Youth Justice involved, or whether arts programmes targeted at ‘at-risk’ youth were also included. Within these at-risk programmes the precursors to or predictors of offending behaviour are based upon stereotypes and factors outside of young people’s control but can often benefit young people by referral to arts programmes.

The report acknowledge my research on the issue of reduced artistic quality for those referred on to arts and culture programmes deemed most ‘at-risk’. My research has demonstrated that assumptions are made about artistic ability whereby ‘ar-risk’ young people often received the weakest artistic input and were steered towards creative outputs where they would account for their risky or offending behaviour (Howard 2022b). Often this was amplified through an output in a subcultural style, such as Drill music, which re-confirmed this ‘offender identity’ (Fatsis 2023).

Howard found that some programmes operated under deficit assumptions about young people’s capabilities and use arts engagement as a means of behaviour management rather than fostering genuine artistic exploration, leading to what was described as a lower-quality arts education in which the most disadvantaged young people often receive the weakest arts programmes. This tension between creativity and accountability can overshadow the personal engagement that these arts initiatives aim to promote. (P58 of the review)

Theory of Change

The review presents a theory of change model for how arts and culture-based programmes with young people engaging in serious or violent crime are proposed to work. Children and young people’s engagement in knife crime & serious violence is positioned as the ‘problem’ and linked to factors such as systemic inequalities, lack of education, trauma, limited positive role models, economic inequality, disadvantage and poverty. Inputs, activities, short-term, medium-term and long-term outcomes are plotted which demonstrate the reduction of knife crime and serious youth violence by supporting young people with self-expression, emotional regulation, community-building, and social re-integration. Key to conditioning these causal explanations is a set of assumptions in the report which acknowledge the wider impacts upon young people’s lives. Firstly, that for arts and culture programmes to be most successful, broader social issues such as poverty and lack of opportunities need to be addressed. Secondly, that programmes need to be sustained and adequately funded to provide long-term impact. Finally, reducing stigma and ensuring supportive social systems, such as mental health, housing, and education are crucial to reinforcing the positive changes made through the arts and culture programmes.

Child First Principles

The Child First Principles are the mandatory evidence-based framework established by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) for England and Wales. The framework challenges traditional punitive ‘risk-led’ models that labelled young people as ‘offenders’. Instead, Child First maintains that youth justice systems must treat young people as children first and individuals who have offended second (YJB, 2025). It is encouraging to see the inclusion of Child First as an emerging and embedded practice within Youth Justice and the potential impact this may have on the arts sector. The child first philosophy takes the view that risk-taking behaviours are a normal part of adolescent development (Haines and Case, 2015), which is a perspective that could help to avoid the deficit-based allocations of arts programmes. Expanding the Child First ABCD tenets can help to articulate further benefits of arts and culture programmes through building a pro-social identity, meaningful participation and co-production and diverting from stigma. Each of these components has an evidence-based within arts and culture programmes (Stinson 2009, Mansfield et al. 2024, Parker et al. 2018).

Researching youth music-making programmes

My recent research has focused on wellbeing and desistance from crime across three different youth music programmes. The claims made in the systematic review put me in a difficult position as a researcher, who is both invested in the field but critical of the failure of short-term measures to account for longer term contexts and changes in young people’s lives. Often these external influences are far beyond the scope of these programmes, or Theories of Change such as the one cited above. For example, my evaluation of the BeatKnots programme (Howard 2026) demonstrated how music can be both productive and entrepreneurial, equipping young people with skills in production, performance and enterprise that expand legitimate opportunity structures. Central to this impact is music mentoring grounded in relational youth work principles through trust-based relationships (Howard 2023). Importantly, their effectiveness lies in being process-driven and youth-centred rather than outcome-imposed, prioritising voice, agency and participation. However, such complex, relational and identity-focused impacts also challenge conventional measurement frameworks, suggesting the need for more nuanced approaches to evaluation that capture lived change rather than solely quantifiable outputs.

Wider research has shown that music programmes can play a role in reducing youth crime by offering young people meaningful avenues for identity formation (Crooke 2025), trauma exploration (Travis and Mullan 2024), and pro-social development (Barrett and Bond 2015). Through genres such as hip-hop, drill and grime, participants can articulate lived experiences in lyrics, transforming difficult emotions and past harms into creative expression (McShane 2025), a process explored in my doctoral research. Self-Determination Theory has been used to evaluate how music practitioners support autonomy, competence and relatedness, aligning with and enhancing wellbeing (Glenister 2025). These programmes foster communities of music that extend beyond the studio, building supportive social networks that reinforce pro-social identities and contribute to desistance from crime (Howard 2025).

Youth Work Music Practice

In our book – Youth Work, Music Production and Measurement (Howard, McShane and Glenister, 20025)  we argue that there is value in recognising the ways that the principles and approaches of youth work and those of music production work so well together, towards recognising this as a distinct form of practice, that we call Youth Work Music Practice. This concept leads us to think about how the purpose of Youth Work Music Practice is seen and valued, and how these programmes and outcomes can be measured. There are outcomes happening for young people that are sometimes small and may not immediately be framed in government-drive agendas of youth crime and violence reduction. If we can better understand the links between psycho-social lives, wellbeing and the more formal governmental agenda of social order, we might more highly value Youth Work Music Practices as the process of delivering musical engagements through youth work practices and spaces.

The argument we put forward is for the increased relevance and recognition of Youth Work Music Practice in social and cultural policies, as an opportunity to listen to what we are measuring by critiquing and resisting logics of measurement that do not fully understand young people’s vulnerabilities and needs and are not working from strength-based approaches. We argue that working with young people is not enough and that delivering support programmes from a deficit perspective of ‘problem fixing’ is working in a way that is inflected with power imbalances. And finally, we argue that Youth Work Music Practice is an important tool for recognising change and measuring value in the ways that it can respond to young lives and the social and political concerns that affect them.

A call to action

The systematic review calls for a shift away from an overemphasis on producing “robust evidence” towards securing robust, sustained funding, recognising that long-term investment is essential for meaningful impact on youth crime. It advocates for a collaborative research agenda that brings together arts practitioners, criminal justice professionals, and researchers to build shared understanding and more relevant forms of evaluation. With local councils now moving towards multi-year funding settlements and renewed attention to deprivation, there is an opportunity to embed more strategic, place-sensitive approaches. Central to this is a recommendation to strengthen cross-sector understanding and collaboration, for example through a coordinated strategy that helps criminal justice providers better recognise the value of arts and cultural programmes, enabling more effective delivery and resource use. I would add to these recommendations the development of a shared practice model for organisations working with music, which centres Youth Work Music Practice and prioritises connections to the music community or local scene, so that young people can sustain engagement and positive pathways beyond the duration of individual programmes. Situated at a juncture of social, education and cultural policy agendas, Youth Work Music Practice is a way to intersect with cultural industries and youth policy towards supporting and continuing the benefits of youth work music production.