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Principles of advanced liberal youth justice policy and practice have infiltrated several jurisdictions. Reflective of these developments, this article contends that Irish youth crime prevention and diversion policy has been dominated by three central rationalities: New Public Management, deficit-based explanations of young people's behaviour and the prioritising of behaviourist types of interventions with young people. To illustrate this argument, the article analyses the Agenda of Change reform process of the multi-agency Garda Youth Diversion Projects. Paying close attention to the discursive nature of policy texts and associated technologies of government, it is suggested that advanced liberal discourses are productive of a distinctive field of youth justice work.

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The introduction of the Children Act 2001 signaled the beginning of a new era for Irish youth justice although arguably represented a “late start” for Ireland in modernizing her youth justice system. Twenty years after the Act came into force, the recently published Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027 commits to developing a youth justice system underpinned by international children’s rights principles. In setting out this vision, Ireland joins a number of other countries that are making efforts to develop their youth justice systems based on international children’s rights principles. This article considers the extent to which Ireland can be said to have moved toward becoming a children’s rights-respecting youth justice system, with reference to three specific areas—diversion, serious crime, and detention. As a country with a hybrid welfare/justice approach to youth justice, and an incremental approach to the incorporation of its international obligations under the UNCRC, Ireland’s path toward developing more rights-compliant approaches to youth justice—and the opportunities and barriers it has encountered—can contribute to global debates for other countries on a similar trajectory.