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The purpose of this paper is to describe the current policy context for work aimed at reducing the criminalisation of looked after children in England and Wales, and to consider the potential that now exists for a sustained reduction in the numbers and proportion of looked after children and young people becoming unnecessarily criminalised.

The author of this paper worked on the Prison Reform Trust’s independent review of looked after children in the criminal justice system, “In Care, Out of Trouble”, chaired by Lord Laming. The paper describes the context for the review and outlines its findings alongside those of concurrent government-commissioned reviews, detailing the government response. The paper describes the action now being taken to reduce the criminalisation of looked after children and argues that, while the UK and Welsh governments appear willing to lead in pursuing reforms, continued pressure will be needed to ensure that this translates into sustained change.

The paper notes that looked after children and young people remain significantly over represented in the criminal justice system despite a number of studies and statutory guidance aimed at preventing this. This is being successfully tackled in places where children’s social care services are working closely with criminal justice agencies, with common goals. The paper reports on the responses from the Welsh and UK governments and lead agencies to Lord Laming’s review and concurrent government-commissioned reviews, which confirm their willingness to show national leadership in raising expectations for effective local joint working.

The paper offers an insight into the current policy context for protecting looked after children and young people from unnecessary criminalisation and sets out the commitments that have been made by the UK and Welsh governments and national agencies to take action to this end. It notes the need for ongoing outside pressure to ensure these commitments translate into action.

This paper aims to support policy makers and practitioners in pursuing improvements in practice to protect looked after children from unnecessary criminalisation. As such, it is hoped that it may play a part in improving the life chances of looked after children and young people who might otherwise face the damaging consequences of involvement in the criminal justice system.

Lord Laming’s review was a timely, independent examination of the unnecessary criminalisation of looked after children. There is now a renewed focus in key government departments and agencies on the need to protect looked after children and young people from unnecessary criminalisation, including through the development of a concordat. Success will require ongoing dialogue with independent bodies, and a stronger focus by the relevant inspectorates. This paper summarises the context and findings of the review and subsequent policy developments, and may be useful for policy makers, practitioners in children’s social care and youth justice, and the police.

The purpose of this paper is to present and explore the findings of part of the author’s research study, an aim of which is to illuminate factors at policy, practice and procedural levels that contribute to the criminalisation of children in residential care in England.

This study utilises semi-structured interviews with children, young people, and professional adults in the care system.

Through analysis of the semi-structured interviews, the paper highlights how “system abuse” can contribute to poor outcomes, including involvement with the youth justice system.

The paper concludes by arguing that in order to successfully decrease criminalisation, it is necessary to employ an approach which, while acknowledging individual culpability, both recognises and focuses on the contribution of wider systemic failings.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a response to a recent government-commissioned review of residential care (Narey, 2016), and the subsequent government response (Department of Education (DfE), 2016), which minimises the correlation between the experience of being looked after and becoming involved in the youth justice system. The Narey review emphasises on the role of early adversity in looked after children’s offending behaviour but minimises the significance of experiences during and after care, and downplays the effect of policies and practices that may exacerbate looked after children’s involvement in the youth justice system.

The paper builds upon a systematic literature review conducted for the Prison Reform Trust (Staines, 2016) to demonstrate the extent of current knowledge about how risk factors, adverse experiences during and after care and the criminalisation of looked after children combine to increase the likelihood of involvement in criminal proceedings. The paper also highlights gaps in the research evidence, particularly in relation to gender and ethnicity.

The findings suggest that the Narey review (2016) and the government response (DfE, 2016), are misguided in their attempts to minimise the role of care in looked after children’s disproportionate representation within the youth justice system. The paper cautions against the over-simplification of a complex relationship and emphasises on the importance of recognising the intersection between different factors.

The paper uses secondary sources to develop an original argument to rebut claims within a recently published review.

Considerations of the legal rights of incarcerated juveniles are often concerned with the myriad ways in which due process rights are circumscribed, abridged, or undermined by the operations of the juvenile court (e.g., Berkheiser, 2016; Cleary, 2017; Feld, 1999; Rapisarda & Kaplan, 2016). Studies of youth legal consciousness have additionally sought to explore the role of media, legal status, court experiences, and even parents in the formation of youth attitudes about the justice system (e.g., Abrego, 2011; Brisman, 2010; Greene, Sprott, Madon, & Jung, 2010; Pennington, 2017). This chapter builds on this work by exploring the way rights shaped the everyday lives of incarcerated youth. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in a juvenile hall, this chapter explores three different moments outside of a formal legal context where the invocation of due process rights limited the self-expression and exploration of incarcerated youth. In each of these cases, the invocation of protecting due process rights by adults served to stifle youth efforts to remake juvenile hall as a place open and receptive to their needs. These three moments demonstrate that rights project a particular legal vision onto a world that does not neatly conform to the reality in which youth lived. For these reasons, the consideration of legal rights for youth must also consider how these rights can forestall the very transformation in circumstances that many youth seek.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the neglect of girls in care who come into conflict with the law, arguing that a gender-neutral approach in this area risks further marginalising an already vulnerable population.

A critical review of the literature and current policy climate is undertaken to explore what is known about the experiences of females in the justice system, as well as knowledge gaps.

Evidence on the prevalence and nature of offending by girls in care is limited. However, as looked after children, girls may be more likely to have their own behaviour unnecessarily criminalised. Whilst females and males share some prior experiences of victimisation and trauma, girls also have distinct needs and may be assessed and managed by state care and control systems in very different ways.

The paper is not based on primary research and does not present a systematic review of the literature.

The need to listen to girls and young women, and a far greater recognition of backgrounds of trauma must underpin future policy and practice. Diversion from the formal criminal justice system wherever possible is also a key goal to aspire to.

This paper focuses on the specific experiences of females. It calls for a gender-sensitive, trauma-informed approach to working with girls and women from the care system who come into conflict with the law, and questions the value of criminalising those whom the state previously deemed to be in need of welfare and support.

The purpose of this paper is first, to explore the impact of risk‐focussed intervention on the lives of young offenders and young people defined to be “at risk” of crime. Second, the paper considers “alternative perspectives” and the prospect of a youth justice predicated upon the principles of informal justice, child‐friendly values and the notion of inclusion.

The first part of the paper reviews the theory and literature on early‐preventative intervention in the youth justice system. The second part of the paper explores “alternative perspectives”, drawing on restorative justice, restorative approaches and diversionary measures.

The paper presents three general findings. First, young people can be subject to youth justice intervention without a “presenting problem” or offence committed. More pertinently this form of pre‐emptive criminalisation violates the child's human rights, due‐process and legal safeguards. Second, young people who are drawn into the net of formal youth justice intervention can suffer from the stigmatising and labelling effects of being criminalised. Third, there is a pressing need for youth justice policy and practice to be transformed, in order to allow for the implementation of more informal, diversionary and restorative measures.

The paper has great value for students of youth justice, and policy makers, especially the conservative‐liberal democrat government who wish to cut costs, introduce restorative justice on a large scale and appear to be in favour of diverting young people away from formal youth justice intervention.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) is home to 21% of the world’s population of people who inject drugs and it is the region with the fastest-growing HIV epidemic. HIV prevalence among women who inject drugs is significantly higher than among men in EECA. Even in places with high coverage of needle syringe programmes and HIV testing and treatment, women’s access to opioid substitution treatment is lower than men, and women’s sexual and reproductive health needs remain unaddressed. EECA has a unique system of drug registries that store the personal data of people who use drugs. Registration lowers the chances of employment and access to education and for women and increases the risk of losing custody of their children. The system of drug registries contributes to drug-related stigma. Breaches of confidentiality of drug registry data lead to the further marginalisation of women who use drugs. Criminalisation, past experience of police violence and poverty contribute to healthcare access barriers for women. There is a need for legislative changes to improve personal data protection, decriminalise drug use and reduce police violence. The positive effects of these changes would only be seen in the long term. In the interim, women need special access programmes that are designed specifically to address their needs, that provide free-of-charge services and that ensure the safety and confidentiality of personal data.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the early findings of research which aims to hear the voice of looked after children about their pathways into offending and subsequent entry into the youth justice system, and the implications that this may have for policy and practice.

One-to-one semi-structured interviews have taken place with 19 looked after children, who are also subject to youth justice supervision. The interviews have been analysed to identify emerging themes, using broadly grounded approaches.

Three important findings arise from the interviews with the participants. First, children in care are being labelled and removed from the mainstream due to problematic behaviours, rather than searching for the underlying cause of the behaviour. Second, significant anger and frustration is expressed towards residential care staff and the child’s social worker, due to several reasons relating to the institutional environment within residential care, and a lack of trust for those professionals with whom control over the child’s life rests. Finally, the children describe feeling powerless whilst in care, and within this context, the peer group plays a crucial role within the lives of the children interviewed.

The findings are based on the subjective views of 19 interviewees. The sample is not representative, and has not been compared with other forms of data. Rather, it provides the reader with the perspectives of some of the most challenging and vulnerable children in the youth justice system, and places their voice at centre stage.

This paper points to several challenges within current youth justice and social work practice which led to the interviewees feeling disempowered and ambivalent about their future. A number of recommendations for policy and practice are made in the concluding sections of the paper which may assist those in policy and practice.

The voice of the looked after child who is also subject to youth justice has not been given centre stage within research to date. The findings are based on this voice and offer a different perspective about a looked after child’s pathways into offending. A number of potential implications for policy and practice, which could be considered and implemented to deal with this problem, are then discussed.

Looked after children (LAC) are criminalised at five times the rate of children in the general population. Children in contact with both child welfare and child justice systems have higher rates of neurodisability and substance use problems, and LAC in general have high rates of school exclusion, homelessness and unemployment. This study aims to understand whether these factors persist in LAC who are in prison as adults.

Administrative data collected by the Do-IT profiler screening tool in a prison in Wales, UK, were analysed to compare sentenced prisoners who were LAC (n = 631) to sentenced prisoners who were not LAC (n = 2,201). The sample comprised all prisoners who were screened on entry to prison in a two-year period.

Prisoners who were LAC scored more poorly on a functional screener for neurodisability (effect size = 0.24), and on four self-report measures capturing traits of dyslexia (0.22), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (0.40), autism spectrum disorders (0.34) and developmental co-ordination disorder (0.33). Prisoners who were LAC were more likely to have been to a pupil referral unit (0.24), have substance use problems (0.16), be homeless or marginally housed (0.18) and be unemployed or unable to work due to disability (0.13).

This study uniquely contributes to our understanding of prisoners who were LAC as a target group for intervention and support with re-integration into the community upon release. LAC in prison as adults may require additional interventions to help with employment, housing and substance use. Education programmes in prison should screen for neurodisability, to develop strategies to support engagement.

Intergenerational confinement is an under-recognized, policy-driven issue which greatly impacts Indigenous and racialized peoples in countries with ongoing colonial legacies. Numerous policy solutions enacted over colonial history have exacerbated instead of mitigated this situation. This chapter advances an improved understanding of the impacts of carceral legacies, moving beyond the dominant focus of parental incarceration in the literature. Focusing on Indigenous peoples, multiple generations in families and communities have been subjected to changing methods of confinement and removal. Using critical policy analysis and interview research, this chapter interrogates these intergenerational impacts of carceral policy-making in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 124 people in the three case countries, this chapter centers perspectives of people who have been intergenerationally confined in carceral institutions. With a goal of transformation, it then explores an alternative orientation to policy-making that seeks to acknowledge, account for, and address the harmful direct and indirect ripple-effects of carceral strategies over generations.