‘There’s Not Going to Be a Single Solution’: The Role of Resettlement Consortia in Improving the Resettlement Outcomes of Young People Leaving Custody

As part of the government’s Transforming Youth Custody programme, in 2014 the Youth Justice Board (YJB) established four new resettlement consortia in four areas in England. This article presents the findings from a process evaluation of the new consortia, paying particular attention to the enablers and/or barriers that affected the implementation of an enhanced resettlement offer. We found that the consortia did appear to improve partnership working and collaboration between key agencies. Yet the delivery of an enhanced offer was often hampered by the geographically dispersed nature of the consortia, along with problems accessing suitable accommodation upon release

The experience of young people transitioning between youth offending services to probation services

Jayne Price, The experience of young people transitioning between youth offending services to probation services, Probation Journal (Vol. 67 Iss. 3) pp. 246-263. Copyright © 2020 (SAGE). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.This article explores the experience of transitioning from youth offending services to adult probation services upon turning age 18 years whilst incarcerated. The significant differences in the level of provision has been described as a ‘cliff-edge’ (Transition to Adulthood Alliance, 2009). Drawing upon interviews with young people held in institutions, stakeholders and survey data from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP), it is argued that the drop in support is exacerbated by poor communication between institutions and services which has harmful implications for young people during this crucial period of developmental maturity and beyond custody

Immaterial boys? A large-scale exploration of gender-based differences in child sexual exploitation service users

Child sexual exploitation is increasingly recognised nationally and internationally as a pressing child protection, crime prevention and public health issue. In the UK, for example, a recent series of high-profile cases has fuelled pressure on policy-makers and practitioners to improve responses. Yet, prevailing discourse, research and interventions around child sexual exploitation have focused overwhelmingly on female victims. This study was designed to help redress fundamental knowledge gaps around boys affected by sexual exploitation. This was achieved through rigorous quantitative analysis of individual-level data for 9,042 users of child sexual exploitation services in the UK. One third of the sample was male and gender was associated with statistically significant differences on many variables. The results of this exploratory study highlight the need for further targeted research and more nuanced and inclusive counter-strategies

Excavating youth justice reform: historical mapping and speculative prospects

This article analytically excavates youth justice reform (in England and Wales) by situating it in historical context, critically reviewing the competing rationales that underpin it and exploring the overarching social, economic, and political conditions within which it is framed. It advances an argument that the foundations of a recognisably modern youth justice system had been laid by the opening decade of the 20th Century and that youth justice reform in the post‐Second World War period has broadly been structured over four key phases. The core contention is that historical mapping facilitates an understanding of the unreconciled rationales and incoherent nature of youth justice reform to date, while also providing a speculative sense of future prospects

School Surveillance, Control, and Resistance in the United Kingdom

This chapter outlines the development of the current socio-political context within which U.K. schools experience surveillance and implement their security and disciplinary procedures. Schools are suggested to have developed their approaches to social control against a background of neoliberalism and audit culture. This involves the marketisation of much of the school system through an ‘academisation’ process; linked to this is an increased surveillance of teachers and students through datafication, CCTV and other digital means. Another form of surveillance- biopolitical control in schools- shows itself through the traditionalisation of gendered school uniform and the increasing pathologisation of the behaviour of ethnic minorities