Again, this title is technically incorrect: minors are not imprisoned or given cus­todial sentences, but are ‘detained’. They currently receive orders for detention and training, detention for a specified period, or detention at Her Majesty’s plea­sure.[771] Section 226 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 adds detention for life or detention for public protection to this […]

The latest Criminal Statistics would suggest that there may still be differential sentencing in relation to community penalties whereby girls receive more regula­tory, and fewer practical, penalties. The overall figures for under-18 year olds in 2003 reveal that 12 per cent of total convictions at the Crown Court are in relation to girls and young […]

Ofsted has recently completed a report, Girls in Prison, which is a survey of female juveniles completing detention and training orders, conducted between October 2002 and April 2003 at three secure establishments.[764] Because the second half of a detention and training order is spent on supervision in the community, the findings cover the experiences of […]

First, a caveat: strictly speaking, we should not refer to ‘sentencing’ girls. Juveniles are not ‘sentenced’ after ‘conviction’; instead, since the implementation of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, the youth court ‘makes an order upon a finding of guilt’ (s 59) in relation to those minors who have been successfully prosecuted. Second, we […]

Whilst girls who offend or behave anti-socially are increasingly and routinely subsumed into ‘youths’, there is, at the same time, a selective but increasing visibil­ity of some children and young people as offenders because they are girls and young women. Girl gangs have been a recurrent focus of media attention. They are the new lads […]

Until legislation in the 1990s, in England and Wales, children and young people under 17 were the ‘juveniles’ who were processed in a juvenile justice system and prosecuted in the juvenile court set up by the Children Act 1908. Since the imple­mentation of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, the criminal court for minors has been […]

The youth justice system is part of the criminal justice system, operating with the offences, procedures and evidential rules established by the criminal law, but, in recent developments, the remit of the system covers young males and females who are not eligible to be in the youth justice system. There are two developments, focusing on […]

Research on the effects of policies directed at parents in the educational and child protection systems suggests mothers are disproportionately burdened and blamed by the encouragement of ‘parental’ involvement and responsibility in these sys­tems.[694] The policy focus on parental responsibility and the involvement of parents in the youth justice system has the same potential to […]

Christine Piper Introduction Gender issues are not high on the youth justice policy agenda in the UK. ‘Boys’ and ‘girls’ or ‘young men’ and ‘young women’ rarely appear in practice and policy documents, and yet the Home Office is concerned about gender differences in the causes of offending.[688] This paradox runs throughout responses to children […]

Not only are men discriminated against, according to these groups; they are demonised as a consequence of feminist influence: ‘Violent women are treated more leniently than violent men. . . This is a result of the demonisation of men by radical feminists.’[676] Men and their interests are also marginalised: ‘Giving women equal value to their […]