Adverse peer pressure is a long‐established contributing factor in the explanation for youth crime. There is also some evidence that positive peer influence is capable of having the opposite effect. In the US, efforts are made to exploit this process in ‘teen courts’, a voluntary alternative to the traditional criminal justice system for younger offenders charged with less serious offences. The aim is to divert them from further involvement in offending. An adapted version of this model is being piloted in Preston, Lancashire, in restorative peer panels. Restorative justice is at the heart of this diversionary initiative for young people at risk of offending. This article, written by members of the evaluation team for the peer panel project, considers the principles, practice and impact of teen courts, and offers some thoughts on implications from the Lancashire pilot.

Over the course of the German occupation of the British Channel Islands from 1940 to 1945, a number of letters of denunciation were sent by islanders to the German authorities, accusing fellow islanders of violations of occupation law or of anti-German activity of one sort or another. The German occupiers were ambivalent toward the denunciations. While recognizing their usefulness in maintaining order and the respect for German rule, they found both the letters and their writers distasteful. The local British authorities in Jersey and Guernsey also found the letters problematic; the consequences for the individuals targeted in the letters could be dire, and the impact on island society as a whole was significant, both during the occupation and beyond liberation in May 1945. The extent and nature of resistance and collaboration have been contentious issues in the historiography of the occupation of the Channel Islands, and these letters have been cited as evidence that islanders were unduly cooperative with the Nazis. This article examines the surviving letters of denunciation, and by placing them into the wider contexts of Nazi Europe and the historiography of denunciation in totalitarian states, argues that denunciation in the Channel Islands, far from being exceptional, was quite typical of the practice throughout the Nazi empire.

As part of the government’s Transforming Youth Custody programme, in 2014 the Youth Justice Board (YJB) established four new resettlement consortia in four areas in England. This article presents the findings from a process evaluation of the new consortia, paying particular attention to the enablers and/or barriers that affected the implementation of an enhanced resettlement offer. We found that the consortia did appear to improve partnership working and collaboration between key agencies. Yet the delivery of an enhanced offer was often hampered by the geographically dispersed nature of the consortia, along with problems accessing suitable accommodation upon release.

This article considers the potential contribution of life coaching to work with offenders. It draws on a qualitative evaluation of a UK-based initiative which has been coaching offenders (exclusively female at the time of the fieldwork, but now also including men) in prison and in the community. The positive impact of coaching perceived by its recipients is set out and assessed against the theory of change which underpins coaching. The contribution to this process of engagement and the relationship between coach and client is also considered.

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