Children in care who are sentenced to custody: is there anything distinctive about their life histories, and why did interventions fail?

• In Event: European Developmental and Life-course Criminology Working Group, Panel 3: The development of (juvenile) delinquency

Abstract

This project sought to find out if there is anything particular about children in care (CIC) who become imprisoned that sets them apart from the majority of CIC who do not. Although UK outcomes for children who have been in the care of the Local Authority are generally poorer than those who have not, it is still only the minority of CIC who find themselves in custody. This research used case records to examine the lives of a sample young people who were sentenced to custody whilst they were in the care of the Local of Authority. Our findings paint a (possibly unsurprising) picture of backgrounds that lacked stability and parental involvement, but it was difficult to identify anything qualitatively different from the backgrounds of most CIC. There were two recurring issues around the way that this group of children were worked with by professionals and dealt with by the Courts. The first was that diversionary, desistance-based principles had questionable results when dealing with the children in the sample who had been recruited into 'County Lines' type drug dealing. The second was that substantial resources were invested in the cases once problems were extreme but achieved little, whereas a fraction of the resources at a much earlier stage might have been more fruitful.

Authors

• Teresa Cox, Buckinghamshire New University

• Maria Ansbro, Buckinghamshire New University