Care experienced children are ten times as likely to have been found guilty of offences as their peers, the Children's Commissioner for England has found.
In half of these cases, the child's first contact with the criminal justice system happened after they entered care, suggesting that the care system was not doing enough to prevent young people with no history of offending from being drawn into criminality, said the watchdog.
On the back of the research, published yesterday, the commissioner, Rachel de Souza, called for government action to prevent the criminalisation of children in care, including the strengthening of a national protocol on the issue.
In response, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced a review of the protocol with a view to producing a strengthened version next year.
Care experienced children 10 times as likely to be criminalised
The commissioner's office examined the records of all children born from 2000-02 in England in relation to any criminal justice involvement from 2010-20.Twenty seven per cent of the care experienced cohort (10,038 children) had ever received a conviction or caution, ten times the proportion of the non-care experienced cohort (2.2% or 34,478 children).
Just under half of the care experienced group (49%, 4,893) had been in care before their first contact with the criminal justice system, with most of this group (3,006) still in care at the time of this contact.
System 'not doing nearly enough to prevent criminalisation'
The report said that this suggested that the care system itself was "not doing nearly enough to prevent those with no history of offending behaviour from being drawn into criminality, and ...potentially itself creating a problem".A disproportionately high number of 3,006 children who had their first contact with the criminal justice system while still in care were placed in children's homes at the time - 37%, compared with about 10% of the care population currently. A similar proportion (38%) were in foster homes, despite them accounting for two-thirds of care placements.
Across the whole cohort, 7,613 children had ever lived in a children’s home, of whom around a third (32%, 2,466 children) had ever received a youth justice caution or conviction while living there.
Children in care 'receiving retribution, not support'
Commenting on her findings, de Souza said that instead of receiving care and support to address entrenched difficulties, children in the care system were being met by "retribution"."Their experience of the criminal justice system can be unsettling, often exacerbating existing trauma or anxiety by being contained in settings that are unsafe, where educational opportunities are limited, and where reports of sexual abuse by staff are not uncommon," she added.
Her recommendations included improving children in care's access to schemes to divert young people away from the criminal justice system and the strengthening of the national protocol on reducing the unnecessary criminalisation of looked-after children and care leavers.
Published in 2018, the protocol, which applies to councils, placement providers, police, health and criminal justice bodies, encourages agencies to develop local arrangements to prevent criminalisation where possible. Among its principles is that the police should not be called for low-level behaviour management or matters a reasonable parent would not have called them over.
However, the commissioner warned that the protocol was not statutory guidance - and so lacked force - and was "inconsistently applied". Her report cited a 2020 report by Liverpool John Moores University that found that identified just 36 local protocols across the country, most of which did not reference ethnicity or gender or cover children in all placement types.
The commissioner called for the national guidance to be reviewed and made statutory, for the government to report on which areas had local protocols and for councils and the police to work together on implementing their local policies.
Government pledges review of anti-criminalisation policy
The MoJ said it would review the protocol and produce a strengthened version in 2026, to provide children in care with more support to avoid ending up in prison.It said the review would explore how councils, schools and police could better work together to offer targeted earlier support to prevent young people entering the justice system, for example, through specialised trauma counselling or peer mentoring schemes.
Justice secretary and deputy prime minister David Lammy said: "Strengthening the protocol will mean these children are treated as children, rather than criminals. Ensuring they get proper help and support means we can change the path they’re on, stop them turning to lives of crime and give them a more positive future."
