Soft benefits for hard nuts: the impact of community‐building interventions on ‘anti‐social youth’

Abstract

This paper emerges from an evaluation conducted by the author into the impact of a community‐based intervention scheme designed to reduce perceived levels of ‘anti‐social behaviour’ amongst young people living in deprived communities. Drawing from this evaluation, the paper discusses the difficulties in assessing quantifiable measures of the impact of intervention schemes such as these; given the complex nature of the communities served, limitations in the realistic achievements of diversionary schemes and difficulties in identifying measureable outcomes. The paper also argues that given the highly problematic nature of such schemes, qualitative and ‘soft’ measures of impact, which although more difficult to assess, should be afforded greater status amongst funders and evaluators.

Keywords:

• youth
• crime
• exclusion
• evaluation
• self‐esteem

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Ray Godfrey for his substantial contribution to the evaluation and for his analysis of police incident data. Thanks are also due to Dr Harriet Dismore, Karen Flanagan and Matthew Ogilvie for their contributions to the data collection.