Effects of youth clubs on children and young people’s involvement in crime 

Why we funded this 

Youth clubs have the potential for preventing children and young people’s involvement in crime and violence, by providing structured after-school programmes, offering a positive alternative, and limiting opportunities for crime and violence in the short term. However, there is limited robust evidence on the effectiveness of youth clubs in reducing children and young people’s involvement in crime and violence, given the lack of data on youth clubs and difficulties in isolating the causal effect of youth clubs. Youth clubs tend to be located in more deprived areas, and factors determining club attendance and participation may be correlated with involvement in crime, making it difficult to disentangle the specific role they might play. 

One existing study (Villa, 2024) shows that austerity-related closure of youth clubs in London may have led to an increase in youth violence. However, whether these findings are consistent with what’s happened in the rest of the country – which differ from London in various aspects including population demographics, service provision and socioeconomic conditions – remains unknown.  

This new study aims to fill this gap, replicating the methodology already developed and applying to administrative crime data across England and Wales. 

What are the main research questions 

The main aim of this research is to establish the causal impact of youth clubs on children and young people’s involvement in crime and violence across England and Wales.  

This project will also examine: 

• How the provision of youth clubs changed across England and Wales in the last decade 
• What led youth club closures or openings across England and Wales 
• How the causal impact of youth clubs varies by crime type (e.g. all offending, violent crime, drug offences, knife crime) and ethnicity. 
• What aspects of data collection and measurement of youth provision could be strengthened to support future research. 

What the analysis involves 

This study will draw on administrative crime data from the Ministry of Justice’s Police National Computer dataset, as well as survey-based crime data from the Crime Survey of England and Wales and Understanding Society datasets. In addition, a new database on the number and types of youth clubs and how these have changed over time will be collected from across Local Authorities across England and Wales, obtained via Freedom of Information requests.  

Youth club closures related to austerity and funding cuts can introduce a ‘shock’ to youth club availability in the area. A quasi-experimental design called ‘difference-in-differences’ will be used to examine the effects of youth clubs on offending, by making a before-after comparison between areas affected by closures and areas that retained their youth clubs.  

Where sample size allows, results will be disaggregated by broad (e.g. violent, non-violent crime), ethnicity and area-level characteristics (e.g. urban/rural, local deprivation, inequality).