Youth Justice Voices is a youth-led participation project in partnership between Staf and CYCJ (Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice) for people aged 16–25 with care and justice experience.

We facilitate youth-led steering groups in Polmont HMP&YOI, Glasgow, and in the North-East. We seek to amplify the voice of those with care and justice experience, influence change, and input on decisions that affect people with care and justice experience. We also have lots of fun, try new things, and offer lots of creative opportunities.

Over the past year, we have worked in partnership with the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit and One Community Scotland on a youth engagement project around the topic of stop and search.

We brought together 13 young adults to participate in workshops around the topic with the national stop and search team, which resulted in the creation of two animations on stop and search, and a learning guide for young people and workers.

Young people worked with creative studio Braw Talent on character development, script writing, prop making and voicing the characters. Young people have spoken at Staf’s national conference, given inputs to over 60 police officers, and spoke about the project to campus-based police officers at a Scottish Violence Reduction development day.

Young people have reflected on the importance of having the opportunity to do projects like this and the impact it has had on them, with one participant expressing:

“I now feel confident engaging with police. Being in the workshops with police officers and just chatting has helped me a lot to not be scared of the police doing their job.”

Police officers also reflected on the importance of working with young people on issues that matter to and affect them:

“It’s been a pleasure. I have learnt a lot during the workshops and have really enjoyed it. We need to do more of this.”

This is just one of the ways we amplify voice and influence change at Youth Justice Voices. We recognise the importance of offering a range of things for young people to be involved in and offering different ways to be involved at Youth Justice Voices. Whether you want to influence change, meet new people, input on decisions that affect you, or learn new things, Youth Justice Voices is for you.

You can join one of our steering groups in Glasgow or Aberdeen, or if you prefer, we can meet you one-on-one or with a worker. As a youth-led participation project, we want to make it as easy as possible for people to meaningfully participate in the change we are driving forward through Youth Justice Voices. We would love you to be a part of that!

Access the Let’s Talk animations and learning guide.

Find out more about Youth Justice Voices and the work we do.

If you would like to know more or are interested in joining, please contact [email protected].