Beyond the Label: Youth Voices on Stigma, Trust and Violence Prevention

This interactive workshop explores young people’s experiences of policing, stigma, justice and violence prevention. It is co-hosted by CISRUL, STAF (Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum) and SIPR (Scottish Institute for Policing Research).

Participants will engage with the work of Youth Justice Voices, a group of care and justice-experience young people, to consider the key barriers to trust, participation, and positive outcomes. YJV’s work includes animations on stop and search and a poetry collection with Aberdeen poet Jo Gilbert.

Reflecting on YJV’s work, participants will consider how labels and assumptions can influence interactions between institutions and young people, and how relationship-based approaches can create opportunities for dialogue and change. For example, YJV’s projects have demonstrated the value of bringing young people and police together to co-produce learning and challenge stereotypes.

The workshop will combine short presentations, facilitated discussion, and participatory exercises to generate practical recommendations for researchers, practitioners, students, police officers, and policymakers interested in youth justice, violence prevention and rights-based practice.

While focusing on Scotland, practitioners and researchers in law, criminology, social work and other fields are invited to share insights from other contexts during discussion. For example, researchers will bring to discussion expertise on justice issues in Scotland, France, US and Mexico. Participating researchers will include Jonathan Aitken (Aberdeen), Tracy Kirk (Stirling), Tania Loureiro (Aberdeen), Suzanne Machin-Autenrieth (RGU), May Pascaud (RGU), Gary Spolander (RGU) and Trevor Stack (Aberdeen).

Please sign up on Eventbrite to participate: Beyond the Label: Youth Voices on Stigma, Trust and Violence Prevention Tickets, Wednesday 18 November  •  12 PM – 4 PM | Eventbrite