Mainstreaming Holistic Approaches in Youth Crime Prevention

Urges Member States to mainstream crime prevention strategies aimed at children and youth with a gender perspective into all relevant social and economic policies and programmes, including those addressing education, health, civic participation, socioeconomic opportunities, information and communications technology and public safety and security, in order to protect children and youth from social marginalization and exclusion and to reduce their risk of becoming victims or offenders;

Encourages Member States to conduct further research on the involvement of children and youth in gang-related crime and to exchange, among Member States and with relevant international and regional organizations, experiences and information on effective and relevant crime prevention programmes and policies, in order to address through innovative approaches the impact of urban crime and gang-related crime on children and youth, fostering social inclusion and employment opportunities and aiming at facilitating social reintegration of children and youth;

Calls upon Member States to develop and implement policies with a view to preventing the involvement of children in criminal activities, promoting the use of alternative measures to judicial proceedings and to detention, where appropriate, such as diversion and restorative justice, and to consider adopting reintegration strategies for children and youth in conflict with the law, consistent with the principle that deprivation of liberty of children should be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time and that the use of pretrial detention for children, wherever possible, should be avoided, all of which can contribute to the prevention of recidivism;

Encourages Member States to enhance capacity-building of criminal justice professionals and institutions in the area of crime prevention strategies aimed at children and youth by providing gender- and child-sensitive training to understand, recognize and effectively respond to all forms of deeply distressing or disturbing experiences of children and youth;

Calls upon the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Member States and relevant international and regional organizations to enhance cooperation and coordination at all levels, including with relevant non-governmental organizations and other relevant stakeholders, in order to better identify, understand, prevent and respond to the involvement of children and youth in criminal activities, and to share information, while preserving the best interests of the child, and knowledge and best practices regarding youth crime prevention;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, together with the institutes of the United Nations crime prevention and criminal justice programme network, to continue its efforts in promoting, as necessary, the collection, analysis and dissemination of data, disaggregated by sex and age, and systematic research on particular situations of social risk and exploitation of children and youth in criminal activities in all forms and manifestations;

Encourages Member States to make full use of the Guidelines for the Prevention of Crime4 and the United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (the Riyadh Guidelines),6 as appropriate, in the wider context of their national economic and social policies, in order to strengthen gender-sensitive crime prevention strategies aimed at children and youth and criminal justice approaches leading to adequate responses to crime in all its forms and manifestations including emerging forms of crime;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to continue to provide technical assistance to Member States, upon request, based on national needs and priorities, in the implementation of the United Nations Model Strategies and Practical Measures on the Elimination of Violence against Children in the Field of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice3 through the global programme developed in this regard;

Also requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in view of its specific mandates in crime prevention and criminal justice and in terrorism prevention, to continue its work on the prevention of the recruitment and exploitation of children and youth by any violent criminal group or terrorist group;

Invites Member States and other donors to provide extrabudgetary resources for the purposes described above, in accordance with the rules and procedures of the United Nations.