2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of the Kilbrandon Report. This set out a radically new vision for juvenile justice in Scotland the core precepts of which were: (i) that deeds are symptomatic of deeper seated needs; (ii) that intervention should be based on an educational model of care; (iii) that systems should avoid criminalising children and young people; and (iv) that, as the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility (MACR) holds no direct relationship to what is known about child development, it should be abolished. This final point implies that the MACR should be aligned to the age of majority – one of the very few recommendations in the Report not accepted by the then Government.

The aim of this round table is to revisit the Kilbrandon vision and consider whether its recommendations remain of salience to the challenges of promoting justice for children and young people who come into conflict with the law today. It will bring together researchers from across a range of jurisdictions to debate the following questions:

1. Can justice for children ever be delivered in a time of austerity, populism and precarity?
2. To what extent do the politics of knowledge production and consumption get in the way of best practice?
3. Is having a MACR below the age of majority an outmoded concept out of keeping with UNCRC principles?
4. If it was possible to design a system of justice for children from scratch based on what we know from research, what might this look like?
5. Does the Kilbrandon vision still have relevance?

This roundtable is chaired by Lesley McAra (University of Edinburgh) and speakers are: Nicola Carr (University of Nottingham), Jonathan Evans (Open University), Barry Goldson (University of Liverpool) and Susan McVie (University of Edinburgh).