The Criminalisation and Exploitation of Children in Care

A Difficult Balance: Challenges and Possibilities for Local Protocols to Reduce Unnecessary Criminalisation of Children in Care and Care Leavers

“…Research by the Howard League for Penal Reform (2021) indicates that children living in residential care are now three times less likely to be criminalised than they were in 2014. 3 Nonetheless, children in care continue to disproportionately receive youth justice cautions or convictions compared with children in the general population (DfE, 2021a), and criminalisation via external criminal and/or sexual exploitation is still very much a risk (Shaw and Greenhow, 2020).…”

“…Children in care are particularly vulnerable to Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) (Jay, 2014) and Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE), including exploitation through 'county lines' drug dealing gangs (Home Office, 2018). Furthermore, children who go missing from care are at serious risk of being physically or sexually abused and exploited, although they are likely to be criminalised when they encounter the police (Shaw and Greenhow, 2020). The inclusion of exploitation recognises the frequent blurring of the boundaries between victim and offender, which can particularly affect children in care (Fitzpatrick et al, 2022;Shaw and Greenhow, 2020).…”

“…Furthermore, children who go missing from care are at serious risk of being physically or sexually abused and exploited, although they are likely to be criminalised when they encounter the police (Shaw and Greenhow, 2020). The inclusion of exploitation recognises the frequent blurring of the boundaries between victim and offender, which can particularly affect children in care (Fitzpatrick et al, 2022;Shaw and Greenhow, 2020). Exploitation features in over half of the 36 protocols analysed (n = 19), with eight specifically stating that behavioural difficulties and/or missing incidents may be linked to experiences of victimisation.…”

Painful lives: Understanding self-harm amongst care-experienced women in prison

“…In a High Court judgement in 2017, Sir Justice Munby criticised the 'disgraceful and utterly shaming lack of proper provision' for children in care with acute mental health needs 2 . Such failings place care-experienced girls and women at a greater risk of justice system involvement, and links with current concerns about their unnecessary criminalisation (Fitzpatrick, 2020), exploitation (Shaw and Greenhow, 2020) and possible abandonment to unregulated accommodation (Children's Commissioner, 2020) -all issues associated with the problem of instability in care (Staines, 2016).…”

The exploitation of girls in care: An ongoing struggle for recognition

“…Over the last decade or more, the impact of both child sexual exploitation (CSE) and child criminal exploitation (CCE) upon care‐experienced children and young people has been highlighted in the UK and internationally. It has been well established that children in state care are particularly vulnerable to exploitation (e.g., Hallett, 2016; Turner et al, 2019) as the result of various individual factors, situational dynamics, socio‐structural forces (Brown, 2019) and systemic deficiencies (Shaw & Greenhow, 2021). Furthermore, gender has long been recognised as contributing both to the risk of exploitation and the type of response received (e.g., see Brown, 2019) and in relation to care‐experienced girls more specifically, research has highlighted various issues.…”