This article examines youth transitions and youth offending in tandem. It argues that the transition to adulthood is heavily implicated in the fact that most offending occurs in the youth phase. Drawing on a study of 20 male and 20 female persistent young offenders in Scotland, it explores young people's desire for integration with others in the transition phases Á with their families in childhood, with their friends in youth, and with the wider society in adulthood. During the youth phase, much of that integration comes from offending itself, whereas when more legitimate opportunities and sources of recognition are offered to them in early adulthood, desistance is more likely to occur.

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This article highlights the views and advice of offenders in Scotland about what helps and hinders young people generally in the process of desistance, why interventions may or may not encourage desistance and what criminal justice and other agencies can do to alleviate the problems which may result in offending. The findings suggest that probation-style supervisory relationships with workers are still the key means to promote desistance but given the fact that offenders perceive desistance to be 'by design' rather than 'by default', there still needs to be a greater emphasis placed by criminal justice and wider agencies on the structural constraints to a legal, conventional and integrated lifestyle.

The relationship between worker and client has for the best part of 100 years been the mainstay of probation, and yet has recently been eroded by an increased emphasis on punishment, blame and managerialism. The views of offenders are in direct contradiction to these developments within the criminal justice system and this article argues that only by taking account of the views of those at the 'coal face' will criminologists, policy makers and practitioners be able to effect real change in crime rates. The article thus focuses on the views of a sample of previously persistent offenders in Scotland about offending, desistance and how the system can help them. It explores not only their need for friendship and support in youth but also the close association between relationships and the likelihood of offending. It also demonstrates the views of offenders themselves about the importance of the working relationship with supervising officers in helping them desist from crime. The article concludes that the most effective way of reducing offending is to re-engage with the message of the Probation Act of 100 years ago, namely, to 'advise, assist and befriend' offenders rather than to 'confront, challenge and change' offending behaviour.

Theories of desistance increasingly acknowledge the need to engage with political and economic discourses beyond the criminal justice system. This article turns to the critical theory of Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser and others to explore the relevance to criminology of the concepts of recognition and redistribution. Interview data from a Scottish study of youth offending and desistance illustrate the potential of these ideas in promoting desistance among young people in transition. The article concludes that desistance requires the restructuring of wider economic and social policy to ensure social justice for marginalised young people.