Policy, Practice and Perceptions: Exploring the Criminalisation of Children’s Home Residents in England

Abstract

The criminalisation of young people in response to children's residential, home-based challenging behaviour remains a persistent problem in the United Kingdom. This article presents research which, through a series of semi-structured interviews and a focus group with professionals from the care and youth justice systems, sought to gain insights into why this might be the case. It was concluded that there is a need to empower residential staff; bring greater objectivity into decision-making processes and raise awareness of how system contact can impact children's self-perception, and future prospects.

Care-criminalisation: The involvement of children in out-of-home care in the New South Wales criminal justice system

“…The failure of care homes to implement appropriate processes to manage children who are likely to have experienced significant trauma leads to an over-reliance on criminal sanctions, notably in response to children who abscond or go missing from care placements and those with cognitive impairment or mental health issues. This literature points to evidence that children in OOHC, particularly those in residential care, are commonly arrested for minor matters that ought not to have incurred a police response (Cruickshank, Barry, & Morrison, 2008;Darker et al, 2008;Fitzpatrick, 2009;Hayden, 2010;McFarlane, 2008McFarlane, , 2010McFarlane, , 2016Moore, Gray, Roberts, Taylor, & Merrington, 2006;Ryan, Marshall, Herz, & Hernandez, 2008;Shaw, 2012Shaw, , 2014Shaw, , 2016Taylor, 2003Taylor, , 2006Wong, Bailey, & Kenny, 2009;Wong, 2014). It has also established that the OOHC cohort progresses quickly and inexorably into the CJS when their peers do not, often for breach of bail conditions arising from over-scrutiny and policing of residential care homes, and a lack of alternate diversionary options and accommodation placements (Richards & Renshaw, 2013;Victoria Legal Aid, 2017).…”

Neurodisability among Children at the Nexus of the Child Welfare and Youth Justice System

“…The over-representation of youth from child protection backgrounds in the youth justice system presents longstanding concerns across several jurisdictions internationally, including the US (Jonson-Reid et al 2018), UK (Shaw 2016), Ireland (Carr and Maycock 2019), Canada (Brownell et al 2018), Australia (Baidawi and Sheehan 2019a), and New Zealand (Stanley 2017). Children who traverse both child welfare and youth justice systems are alternately referred to in the literature as "crossover", "dual jurisdiction" or "dually-adjudicated" youth (Baidawi and Sheehan 2019b).…”

‘We Don't do Measure and Quotes’: How Agency Responses Criminalise and Endanger the Safety of Children Missing in Care in New South Wales, Australia

“…Third, agencies responded inconsistently to missing children, which impacted negatively on relationships between police and residential staff. This inconsistency, and its consequences within the residential care environment, has been identified in international literature (Gentleman ; Hayden ; Paul ; Shaw ), however this research extends the understanding of its effects to the relationships and interactions with missing children themselves. By conflating going missing with criminality, agencies disregarded children's vulnerability and minimised the potential risks they faced while missing.…”

“…Participants in this study expressed strong dissatisfaction with their professional inter‐agency relationships. As in England and Wales (Crawford and L'hoiry ; Hayden ; Shaw ), and Scotland (Gentleman ; Paul ), tension was created when residential staff believed that they were mandated to call police and police felt that they were being overused to manage children's behaviour.…”