Countering Paramilitary & Organised Criminal Influence on Youth

Duncan Morrow and Jonny Byrne

In June 2019 a team of academics based in Ulster University were commissioned by the Corrymeela Community on behalf of the Education Authority to conduct research on the theme of young people, youth work and tackling paramilitarism in Northern Ireland.

The specific tasks were:

• To research/map the effective and innovative theory/practice of 10-12 international INGOs or NGOs working with youth and actively countering factors that create risk vulnerability, and/or susceptibility related to paramilitarism, organised gangs or criminality
• To enhance the CPD model by integrating and testing the relevance of international frameworks and associated tools to support the technical skills, capacity and wellbeing of front-line workers.

The goal was to produce research that could shape debate on the future of youth work intervention to support our Programme.  The chosen method was to review literature on best practice across a number of international models of intervention with young people affected by violence by armed groups of various sorts and to conduct field research in Northern Ireland.

Please click on the link below to download the report.