While States have a legal obligation to ensure that uncrc rights are fully vindicated in youth justice systems, States’ responses to offending by children are often dictated by other concerns. The need to ensure accountability and the protection of society, and the need to ensure children are treated as children and with respect for their needs – epitomised by the “welfare/justice debate” – are often seen as contradictory goals, meaning that identifying an overall “model” of youth justice that will also ensure uncrc-compliance can be difficult. Derived from a comparative study of child rights compliance in the youth justice systems of Scotland, Ireland and New Zealand, this article poses the question whether the uncrc mandates a particular approach to youth justice. It examines the balance between welfare and justice concerns found within the text of the uncrc and reflects on what this means for the development of rights-compliant youth justice systems.

The right of the child defendant to participate effectively in criminal proceedings is a fundamental aspect of the right to a fair trial, and is guaranteed under a number of international instruments, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ensuring that the right is realised at the domestic level requires States to take positive steps to facilitate the child’s effective participation. This article examines how the child’s participation is supported through statutory provisions and by the courts in Ireland and New Zealand. The discussion highlights challenges and positive steps taken to facilitate effective participation in domestic law.

While restorative approaches encompass a small proportion of youth justice practices in Ireland, the new Youth Justice Strategy (2021–2027) aims to include more victims in restorative justice, expand family conferencing and train youth justice professionals in restorative practices. This article discusses the legal, policy and practice contexts of these developments, considering how Ireland has defined, used and researched restorative youth justice to date. It situates the ongoing efforts to meet victims’ and children’s needs, and to change criminal justice cultures, in the international criminological and legal literature on minimum intervention and child participation, analysing the possibilities and challenges facing restorative youth justice in Ireland.

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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.