On 30th September and 1st October 2025, CERIS (Community for European Research and Innovation for Security) hosted its Annual FCT event on Youth-related Criminality and Training for Practitioners. ENACT was invited to prepare and present an update Flash Report on Youth and Criminality as part of the event.
By using data from ENACT’s structured knowledge base, supplemented by additional reports, ENACT compiled a wide-ranging report covering the main areas youth become implicated in criminality, from drugs, to exploitation and radicalisation, as well as the risks and opportunities posed by technology.
The event also provided an opportunity for ENACT to share with the community the latest project activities and reiterate the opportunities for the FCT community to get involved. Furthermore, there was the opportunity to share expertise across the different facets of youth-related criminality such as the impact of the Digital Services Act, the Victim’s Rights Directive and how it applies in the youth-context, and the recent Keep Your Eyes Open campaign. Meanwhile, there was an opportunity to understand and interactive with the many of the EU-funded projects operating in this area, such as GEMS, CESIUM, and RAYULEA.
Executive Summary of the ENACT Flash Report on Youth and Criminality: Youth are implicated in, and disproportionately affected by, a broadening range of criminal phenomena: traditional offences (violent incidents, knife crime), drug-related offending (including darknet markets and party-drugs contexts), online harms (cybercrime, grooming, radicalisation) and exploitation (trafficking, social-media-facilitated recruitment). New vectors, such as social platforms, the ‘manosphere’, AI tools and gamified learning environments, are changing both how youth are recruited into crime and how they are victimised. Prevention that focuses on early intervention, parental and school support, place-based community responses, and targeted digital resilience yields the strongest evidence of reducing both perpetration and victimisation.
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Read the report: Youth and Criminality
