Suchergebnisse

ObjectivesNewly linked administrative datasets allow us to explore the relationship between ethnicity, care experience and youth justice involvement. This data reveals huge disparities in the youth justice system, highlighting the need for urgent policy reform to prevent unnecessary criminalisation of children in care and care leavers.
MethodsUsing linked administrative datasets from the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education, this paper takes a birth cohort approach to understanding youth justice involvement. It draws on National Pupil Database, Children Looked After and Police National Computer records from 2006 to 2017. Firstly, this paper will use descriptive statistics to highlight disparities in the extent of youth justice involvement among care-experienced individuals compared to non-care-experienced individuals and how this varies by ethnic group. Focusing on three offence types, the paper will then draw on mixed effects models to assess the likelihood of receiving a harsh sentence.
ResultsThe paper will show that the extent of youth justice involvement among individuals who have been in care (i.e. foster care, children's homes and kinship care) is much greater than previously thought. It will demonstrate that youth justice involvement is especially common among ethnic minority care-experienced individuals, particularly those who identify as Black or mixed ethnicity. The paper will highlight how care experience increases a person's risk of receiving a custodial sentence and may also affect their risk of getting a longer custodial sentence. Findings will be situated within the broader literature on in-care criminalisation (e.g. Walklate & Fitz-gibbon, 2021), calling attention to institutional and structural influences on justice systems involvement.
ConclusionThe paper will show how linked administrative data can generate new insights which can inform policy and practice across both systems of care and justice. In doing so, it will make the case for a statutory duty of preventing unnecessary criminalisation of children in care and care leavers."

The youth and adult criminal justice systems in England and Wales disproportionately draw in individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds (Lammy, 2017; YJB, 2021) and those who have been in care as children (HMIP, 2021; MoJ, 2012). While evidence suggests that there is likely to be considerable overlap between these two groups (Prison Reform Trust, 2016), there was previously little in the way of quantitative data to explore this. The newly linked MoJ/DfE datasets have provided a unique opportunity to investigate the intersections between ethnicity, care experience and justice systems involvement for the first time. This paper will draw on findings from an ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK) Fellowship utilising the newly linked datasets. It will outline to what extent ethnic minority care-experienced people are over-represented in justice systems. It will also explore the nature of this involvement including offence type, frequency, and disposals. The findings will be contextualised within the wider literature on racialisation (Phillips, 2012) and criminalisation in care (Howard League, 2017) to enable a broader understanding of the issues. The paper will outline the challenges of conducting interdisciplinary research using linked data from across government departments as well as the possibilities for future research.

Available open access digitally under CC BY-NC-ND licence. 'Desistance' - understanding how people move away from offending – has become a significant policy focus in recent years, with desistance thinking transplanted from the adult to the youth justice system in England and Wales. This book is the first to critique this approach to justice-involved children, many of whom are yet to fully develop an identity (criminal or otherwise) from which to 'desist'. Featuring voices from academia, policy and practice, this book explores practical approaches to desistance with children in the 'Child First' context. It gives new insights into how children can be supported to move away from offending and proposes reforms to make a meaningful difference to children's lives