“They’re Just Children at the End of the Day” How Is Child First Justice Applied to Children Who Commit Serious Crimes?
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Risk vs. Child First Justice
2.1. The Risk-Focus of “New Youth Justice”
2.2. A New Approach—Child First
3. Addressing Serious Offending by Children
4. Balancing the Rights of Children with the Rights of Society
5. Child First for Serious Offending—The Current Study
5.1. Methodology
5.1.1. Design
5.1.2. Sample
5.1.3. Data Analysis
5.1.4. Ethical Considerations
5.2. Results and Discussion
5.2.1. Professional Opinions of Applying Child First to Serious Crimes
Yeah, yeah, they’re just children at the end of the day, aren’t they. They’re all children. They don’t know what the gravity scores are.(R1)
Well, I think it applies from gravity score matrix 1 basically, all the way up. You don’t treat a child differently because of the matrix level.(R3)
These quotes demonstrate that practitioners thought that CF should equally apply to children offending more seriously (than lesser offending). Similarly, none of the practitioners felt that any other approach including the previous RFPP) was better particularly when considering children committing serious crimes (“No I don’t think so, I think it’s very important to work with a child as a child”, R3).Child First approach … seeing them as a child first even if the offence is more serious … but understanding what’s been going on for that young person, allowing them to be heard, allowing them to be seen … that doesn’t change for out-of-court so lower than, 5 or low, and it doesn’t change … for above.(R5)
5.2.2. Challenges of Applying CF to Children Offending Seriously
The Child’s Agency and Perception of Self
The Effects of Trauma and ACEs
I mean … over 99% of them have been affected by abuse, trauma, poverty … so many negative things in their background …you realise that… the offending is linked to … the things that they do have in their childhood.(R1)
The difficulty is that when you look at that [higher] gravity level, the complexities of that young person…are such that they don’t seem to have those same opportunities and it becomes quite difficult then.(R4)
I have a big problem with, with, um, re-traumatising them, because you can see that you’re re-traumatising them just by talking about the offending, but obviously you have to, you have to do that to do the assessment.(R1)
We’ve recently had a young person who … was in court and had been imposed on the sex offender registration, which as a young person of 17 … is just going to make life so difficult for that young person … so it’s hard to then work with that young person and try and say “what do you want for your future,” because they are going to be restricted.(R4)
Perception of Self
They’ve obviously lashed out, or done something due to past trauma … but then there is a sense of shame or embarrassment about their behaviour and then they find it more difficult to address.(R1)
Often the question … is will this stay on our record, and sometimes it does depending on the offence and the sentence, but actually it’s about… helping them to understand that it’s not … the be all and end all … but often they can see it like that.(R5)
A lot of the young people I work with are 17 approaching 18, so … that can be quite challenging because they do like to think of themselves as being an adult.(R4)
The Desire and Motivation to Change Behaviour
I would say that’s a big factor in our approach … it has to be something that the child wants to get out of this as well, rather than them having a sort of requirement of a court order … it’s got to be a two way street really … they’ve got to see that they’re getting something out of this as well.(R2)
His … key case worker…showed him the intervention plan and he’s written across … NO in big letters and in the bit where it says young person’s signature, he has just written f*** you …we’ve got his second chance at a panel meeting for his Referral Order on Friday and if he … doesn’t engage with that we are going to have to take it back to court.(R1)
Structural Issues
The Exclusion Dilemma: The Discipline and Access to Education Balance
I think a lot of young people that I work with…aren’t in education … so they haven’t got … that pro-social identity. They aren’t part of … that educational system that supports them really…we do work as a service work with education quite closely, recognising that, actually, it’s really important … I do find that it can be a struggle to be Child First in that way because sometimes they are excluded because of their behaviour.(R4)
I mean from a school point of view, even if you understand that a child has had a traumatised background and that’s why they’re behaving like they are, they still can’t behave like that in school. They … have to be out of school, and … we’ve just got … so many kids being kicked out of school at the moment.(R1)
Barriers Associated with Custody
I suppose with the more serious offence … the court have the final say on sentencing and if you’ve got a child that’s escalating in their offending behaviour … ultimately the court … are going to give them more onerous outcomes, Detention and Training Orders5, you know, kind of, custody … as a potential option. That still shouldn’t change that … child first approach.(R2)
One young person is in custody at the moment. It’s very difficult for me to be Child First with him because he’s contained … his wishes and thoughts are very secondary to the fact that he’s been detained because of what he’s done.(R4)
Consistency Is Key
Yeah we get that a lot of feedback is the team are consistent, and again it’s not to necessarily be critical of social workers but, you know, often we do see that, that these children, these young people are open to us and wider children’s services and because of the teams in terms of ages, you know so they’ll change age, they’ll change social worker and that is just the structure of children’s services.(R5)
A lot of the youths that we work with come into service, I would say, because they haven’t had a consistent approach … whether that be parents, friends, school, social services.(R2)
I would like to say it’s quite evidence-based that over time, kind of through a consistent approach … we manage to … break down those barriers and … we do build up a trusting relationship.(R2)
Influential Relationships and the Public
The Influence of Pro-Criminal or Pro-Social Associations
Sometimes that is all it takes … or even if they get a girlfriend who is more pro-social than they are, they kind of drop their ties, so that’s … nothing to do with us but … you encourage them to have good relationships.(R1)
All of the young people that he’s socialising with … we’re making him socialise with other young people who have a criminal identity … from talking to him recently, there is that sort of hierarchy of offences within custody … it’s difficult to support him to have that non-criminal identity and to focus on his future.(R4)
Parental Responsibility
I’m thinking of one particular young person who hasn’t got a lot of support from family and parents, you know has missed court appearances because parents haven’t taken them … they’re criminalised for not attending court, warrants being issued and picked up by the police, but actually as a child that young person wasn’t able to get to court on their own. But it’s not the parents that have had a warrant out or are waiting half a day in the police cells waiting to be produced for court.(R4)
Public Perception
In my role I tend to do a lot with children who have … displayed sexually harmful behaviour and … that can be a really difficult area within the public eye … because … it does come with a lot of stigma.(R2)
It’s about remembering all the different facets involved because at the end of the day we are working with children who have committed some very serious offences, so we have to bear in mind the public protection but we also have to bear in mind that they are children at the end of the day.(R3)
It’s more of, like, public perception of the serious offenders isn’t it. Like, in the case of the boys who murdered James Bulger, like years and years ago, they were treated as adults and tried in an adult court … ten years old and they eventually went through the court of human rights and … the court of human rights said that they never should have been treated like that, … they were still vulnerable children.(R1)
5.2.3. Overcoming the Challenges
You encourage them to have good relationships and so I would tell their parents “don’t let them hang around with him if you can help it”.(R1)
For me it’s about working with a child … there’s going to be a degree of prejudice one way or another and it’s about working with individuals and making sure they’re aware of that and ways of combating that and addressing it.(R2)
I see that child as a child, as an individual but at the same time I’m very aware of …those risk issues, making sure that you’re not … masking over them … but at the same time encouraging and motivating that child, to support them to understand that we are, at the end of the day, working with them, support them to have … a more positive life experience for the future.(R3)
I’ve got quite a few young people who … have been excluded and we’ve worked quite closely to try and … broker for that young person and their family for that school to try and see if there’s any way them back into access some sort of education.(R4)
I think a fair significance have a number of ACEs and so that can impact them trusting professionals … so in terms of collaborating with them, … I think yeah it’s just that kind of open work, hearing, listening, ensuring that, you know, if things are agreed that they’re continued on. I think often we see “so and so in my past agreed to this and I didn’t get it or they changed” so I think it’s about being open and honest with them.(R5)
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | The age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is 10 years of age, so youth justice in this jurisdiction runs from the age of 10 until children become adults at 18 years of age [4]. |
2 | The YJB oversees the running of the YOTs and, until 2017, custodial institutions. YOTs are responsible for working directly with children in conflict with the law; statutory agencies include the police, probation, social services, and health and education services, working as part of a multi-disciplinary approach to youth justice [15]. |
3 | The gravity of the offence is measured on a scale of 1 to 8, where 1 denotes the least serious and 8 denotes the most serious offences based on the substantive outcomes data for children ages 10–17 years old recorded by the YOTs between 2006 and 2012 [37]. These offences and gravity scores range from Breach of the Peace (1) and Theft from the Person (3) to Rape and Murder (both 8) ([37], pp. 220–223). |
4 | Alternative approaches include the previous risk approach but could also encompass such methods as restorative justice. |
5 | Detention and Training Orders are custodial orders for children, lasting from 4 to 24 months, where they spend half of the sentence in custody and the latter half back in the community (see The Sentencing Council https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/pronouncement-cards/card/detention-and-training-order/ (accessed on 2 March 2025) for more information). |
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Tenet | Details of Approach and Impact |
---|---|
Tenet 1: Seeing children as children | Children’s best interests and needs/capacities are prioritised through child-focused and developmentally appropriate interventions. This also acknowledges external structural barriers to avoid unnecessary responsibilisation of children. |
Tenet 2: Building pro-social identity for positive outcomes | Future-focused and constructive work emphasises the development of children’s strengths, skills, capacities and roles they can take on in life to build a positive pro-social identity and draw them away from offending behaviour. |
Tenet 3: Collaborating with children | Children (and their carers) are actively involved in all aspects of their youth justice journey and are co-collaborators with practitioners in planning youth justice activities. |
Tenet 4: Diverting children from stigma | Children are diverted from becoming criminalised through prevention (to stop them offending in the first place) and diverted from prosecution where possible (and into diversionary activities instead). Where intervention is unavoidable, it is minimal. |
Themes | Subthemes |
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The child’s agency and perception of self |
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Structural issues |
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Influential relationships and the public |
|
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Palmer, Z.A.; Hampson, K. “They’re Just Children at the End of the Day” How Is Child First Justice Applied to Children Who Commit Serious Crimes? Societies 2025, 15, 149. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15060149
Palmer ZA, Hampson K. “They’re Just Children at the End of the Day” How Is Child First Justice Applied to Children Who Commit Serious Crimes? Societies. 2025; 15(6):149. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15060149
Chicago/Turabian StylePalmer, Zoe Anne, and Kathy Hampson. 2025. "“They’re Just Children at the End of the Day” How Is Child First Justice Applied to Children Who Commit Serious Crimes?" Societies 15, no. 6: 149. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15060149
APA StylePalmer, Z. A., & Hampson, K. (2025). “They’re Just Children at the End of the Day” How Is Child First Justice Applied to Children Who Commit Serious Crimes? Societies, 15(6), 149. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15060149