Navigating identity disruption: The criminalisation of children in care

• In Event: Labelling and Interactionalist Perspectives

Abstract

The over-representation of care experienced children in the youth justice system is an enduring problem globally. Established policy explanations either focus on the shared background of ‘risk factors’ for offending and being taken into care, or by the readiness of care staff to involve police for misbehaviour. Academics have alternatively highlighted elements of care administration, environments and relationships that may have negative effects on children’s outcomes, more recently highlighting how care can be depersonalising and stigmatising. As yet, however, the literature has not identified the process by which these may contribute to children’s criminalisation.

The current research examines the criminalisation process through an interpretative analysis of depth interviews with children in residential care homes in north-west England about their journey into the youth justice system. Framed within Goffman’s (1963) concept of ‘spoiled identity’; we present a typology of the different ways that children respond to the depersonalisation, labelling and stigma that they experience in care; each presenting as behaviours that get them into trouble with the law. The typology of responses to the stigmatisation and depersonalisation of the care experience ranges from reacting against stigma, reflecting negative label, defending identity, reinforcing pre-care identity and constructing a new identity.

Consequently, we reconceptualise the over-representation of care experienced children in youth justice as resulting from children’s navigation of the spoiling their identity (the ‘Criminalising Care Model’). This novel understanding of the process by which the care system actively promotes offending behaviour necessitates a reworking of the policy narrative around the over-representation of care-experienced children in youth justice. It requires policymakers and practitioners to consider both how to reduce the stigmatising effects of the care system and how to more appropriately address children’s responses to it.

Authors

• Anne-Marie Day, Manchester Metropolitan University

• Neal Hazel, University of Salford, UK

• Andrew Clark, University of Greenwich