The aim of our study is to explore the thoughts and beliefs held by the professionals who work with the sentence youth service for young offenders, and how they feel about the same.

How is the sentence youth service perceived from a professional perspective? How does the concurrence look like between the police, the social services and the prosecutor, when it comes to young offenders? What kind of difficulties/challenges do the professionals see in the possibility to effect the sentence youth service?

The study is based on a qualitative method. The data consists of seven semi-structured interviews with two police officers, four social workers and one prosecutor.

The results of our study indicate that youth service is a good sentence for young first-time offenders; the study also indicates that concurrence between the different professions is a success factor; furthermore the study revealed that it was very difficult finding adequate working places.