The ‘problem’ of youth violence, and what could be effective responses to it, continues to occupy the minds of policymakers and other stakeholders. In this book we wish to approach the topic in a way that treats it as real, knowable, and of concern to society. We aim to provide a distinctive addition to what has become a protracted debate over youth violence and whether it is a growing ‘problem’ at all. This debate, in our view, risks appearing irrelevant to the people who live and work in neighbourhoods affected by youth violence. Hence, this book and the two-year research project it describes, is based on the premise that while the phenomenon of youth violence needs to be continually and critically analysed, significant numbers of young people continue to be drawn into violence as perpetrators, witnesses or victims, with damaging consequences for young people and the communities in which they live.

We also have a sense, partly as a result of our own experiences as youth workers and now as pedagogues in the field, that youth workers could occupy a prime position in terms of their ability to understand and prevent youth violence. However, there are many complex issues around the use of youth work as a response to violence that we felt warranted further investigation through research at grass-roots level. Social policy, funding, managerial and evaluation regimes may be acting as inhibitors of innovative youth work practice and many of the youth workers whose work involves responding to violence report being poorly funded, coordinated, trained and evaluated. Inter-agency collaboration presents real challenges (Harris, 2005; Tiffany, 2007).

We do not seek to demonstrate the impact of youth work interventions through experimental methods, to maximise generalisability through the use of surveys and control groups, or produce a study of the prevalence, frequency and nature of youth violence. Instead, we have deliberately chosen to use qualitative data and detailed case studies – insider accounts – that look closely at the subjective experiences of those involved because we feel that in this way, we will be better placed to understand how processes of intervention, prevention and desistance work. The book uses direct evidence gained from young people and youth workers from three European countries talking to us and our peer researcher colleagues over two years about their experiences of violence and of each other.