Securing Responsibility, Achieving Parity? The Legal Support for Children Leaving Custody

Abstract

This article examines the legal support available to incarcerated children when they leave custody. It argues that the current support provided to custody-leavers – which includes both ‘resettlement’ (provided by youth justice agencies) and duties owed to some custody-leavers under Part III of the Children Act 1989 – may achieve criminal justice aims (such as preventing re-offending) but does not adequately protect the status and rights that all custody-leavers have qua child. When the child leaves custody her primary status is child, not offender, and therefore it is argued here that she should be entitled to the same legal rights as analogous groups of children; namely, care-leavers. It is suggested that the reason why care-leavers and custody-leavers are comparable groups to whom parity in legal rights should be accorded is because the four types of responsibility that underpin the state’s obligations to care-leavers (namely: reparatory, assumed, generational and equity-based) apply equally to custody-leavers.

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