of children deprived of liberty in 2014, it requested consultations with a wide range of stakeholders, including children. Eventually, more than 270 young people from 22 countries participated, most of them with a criminal justice detention background. A distinct research methodology with dedicated child safeguarding standards was developed for this purpose. In the end, on a qualitative level, the views of children added value both to better understanding of impact of and pathways leading to detention (from excessive criminalisation of child behaviour to dysfunctional child protections systems) as well as of drivers for change (e.g. exposing the inefficiency of existing detention regimes).59 2.5 Influencing change through peer to peer exchange The project had as a specific goal to facilitate peer to peer exchange among national authorities and practitioners at the national and European level to enhance their understanding of promising practices from other EU countries and their willingness to bring about change and engage in reform efforts.60 The basic idea was that if promising practices are presented from criminal justice actors themselves, e.g. police officers to police officers, these will be more credible to the eyes of their peers and ultimately would make it much more likely to motivate them for necessary reforms. Moreover, criminal justice actors holding similar positions may be capable of sharing a great amount of practical details on the practice, thereby helping to overcome certain doubts or resistance due to lack of knowledge or fear to implement a new practice. This assumption acknowledged the experience that CSOs are often confronted with the argument that they do not understand the ‘reality on the ground’, they may have unrealistic expectations or are biased towards the rights of suspects and accused rather than the rights of victims of crime and the protective interests and obligations of the state. Thus, at the regional consultations we invited state representatives from the different project countries for peer-to-peer exchange. A particularly good example was the regional consultation in Dublin where the Irish police invited participants from other EU Member States to visit a police station to see for themselves how they set up the AVR of interviews. This allowed everyone to get a good first-hand experience of this promising practice, to ask questions about its implementation, challenges, and to witness how police officers accept and benefit from it. Similarly, in Vienna, Bucharest, and Madrid the invited authorities showed great interest in the concrete practices presented by their peers on an accessible letter of rights and effective systems to provide access to legal representation.61 Overall, the method of presenting and discussing concrete examples of promising practices is very helpful to illustrate and motivate the relevant stakeholders for reforms. The challenge remains however, to motivate key stakeholders to participate in such regional consultations, notably State representatives (see above, § 2.4.2). It is thus important to carefully evaluate the reasons behind this and develop solutions for the future on how to more effectively engage key stakeholders from the state (see above, § 2.4). Possible solutions could be to invest more time and resources to highlight the benefits of the regional consultations or more closely involve the police organisations of the host countries in the organisation of the regional consultations and in sending out the invitation to other countries. Moreover, other ways could be 59. Manfred Nowak, The United Nations Global Study on Children deprived of Liberty (Omnibook 2019) and especially ‘Chapter 5: ‘Views and Perspectives of Children Deprived of Liberty’ at 76. 60. Justice Programme (JUST) Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (REC) PROPOSAL (PART B) 8. 61. For information on these practices see the factsheets published in the framework of this project. 27