Crime prevention with a focus on youth

United Nations guidance on crime prevention calls on countries to include prevention considerations into all relevant social and economic policies and programmes, placing particular emphasis on communities, families, children, and youth at risk. Similarly, but with a focus on youth crime, a recent resolution adopted by Member States calls for mainstreaming youth crime prevention strategies into all relevant social and economic policies and programmes to protect youth from social marginalization and exclusion and to reduce their risk of becoming victims or offenders. At the Thirteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in 2015, Member States acknowledged that communities, families, health and education professionals play a crucial role in preventing and responding to youth crime. Reference was made to specific urban crime phenomena, including crime committed by gangs, which required new and innovative approaches to crime prevention. Empowering youth and engaging them as agents of change offers a great potential to achieve positive developments in society. From the perspective of social crime prevention, this Themenbox presentation will focus on ways to address root causes of youth crime and violence and to strengthen resilience of youth by designing and implementing evidence-based programmes at community level, including by making use of sports.