There is a lack of largescale data on offending behaviour of parents involved in care proceedings. This contributes to a lack of understanding of how the offending behaviour of these parents can be addressed and what works to reduce or stop their offending. Given the significant harm offending and receiving official sanctions for offending can cause to individuals, families, and society at large it is essential to address this gap.

In this respect, policy makers are interested in family drug and alcohol courts (FDACs) – a problem-solving court that radically differ from standard care proceedings because they treat parental difficulties as well as adjudicating. Policy makers are interested in the effect of FDACs on offending behaviour because of their greater success in tackling parental substance misuse and higher family reunification rates compared to standard care proceedings.

The overarching research question that we aim to address therefore is whether receipt of FDAC is associated with changes in parental (re)offending.

We are creating a longitudinal cohort of approximately 1700 parents by bringing together individual parental records from three administrative data sources, FDAC, Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) and the PNC (Police National Computer records). A control group will be selected of parents who are similar in key characteristics but who go through standard care proceedings. The study will investigate whether receipt of FDAC decreases the likelihood of offending, its frequency, type, seriousness, and resultant sanctions compared to standard care proceedings. Mediating influences including gender, previous history of care proceedings, previous conviction history, and stability of family reunification after receipt of FDAC will be explored.

In the first instance we will explore the value of children’s social care data in relation to parental offending and present the implications that these findings have for longitudinal studies that track outcomes.

In recent years a growing body of evidence has suggested that young adults (aged 18 – 25) should be treated as a distinct group in the criminal justice system. There is also evidence from bodies such as inspectorates that young adults are currently poorly served by probation when compared to children in the youth justice system. In response to these concerns, the Probation Service in England and Wales implemented a specialist youth to adulthood probation Hub in London in 2021. The Hub was designed to meet the age-specific needs of young adults on the probation caseload through the provision of a co-located, multi-disciplinary team comprising probation practitioners and external, commissioned services such as mentoring, well-being and speech and language. The Hub was underpinned by a trauma-informed approach that took young adults’ differing levels of maturity into account when assessing, planning, delivering and enforcing court orders. In this presentation we will provide an overview of the findings from a process evaluation that sought to understand how the Hub was implemented. We carried out 130 interviews with staff and young adults at the beginning, middle and end of the pilot. Through analysis of our longitudinal and comprehensive data we highlight the ways in which staff and young adults experienced the Hub over the course of the pilot. We also identify the key benefits and challenges to this way of working. Our data sheds light on how young adults’ views and experiences are both similar to and differ from those of staff working in the system and we will reflect on the ways in which we sought to ensure that the voices of young adults were present in our findings. We will conclude by considering the implications for rolling out similar models elsewhere and what this means for improving probation practice more broadly.

While much academic ink has been spilled on developments in youth justice from the 1980s to the present time (see, most recently, Goldson et al, 2020), few studies have examined ‘contrasts in tolerance’ (Downes, 1988) within the justice system itself. This lacuna was addressed through PhD research comparing and contrasting the youth, adult and young adult systems in three countries, namely, Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands. All of these countries have reputations for progressive or innovative youth justice systems, although the same cannot always be said of the adult or young adult justice system within the same countries.

Drawing on empirical research carried out in these countries, this paper argues that the criminological literature to date has not paid sufficient attention to the boundaries between the youth and adult systems, the 'exit points', and the way in which they constitute one another. By examining who is included or excluded from the youth justice system there is an opportunity to learn about a system's values and assumptions. Ultimately, when thinking about penal change, this paper argues that there is a need to move away from a dualistic approach (punitiveness in the adult or youth justice sector) and towards cross-sectoral analysis.

Despite increasing attention being paid to young adults as a distinct group with distinct needs in the UK criminal justice system, along with vocal calls for a better understanding of ‘maturity’, relatively few studies have explicitly addressed young people’s conceptions of maturity as it relates to their negotiation of the carceral environment. Drawing upon a series of narrative interviews with young adults in both carceral and community settings in Northern Ireland, this paper will explore the unique challenges facing young adults as they seek to navigate the transition to adulthood. An analysis of the young adults’ accounts highlights a range of issues concerning processes of transition into and between elements of the prison estate, experiences of institutional infantilization, and the difficulties associated with “growing up” in what is frequently characterized as a static and enervating environment. Contrary to prevailing policy engagement with the concept, particularly in the UK, this paper highlights the risks presented by an implacable policy focus on the relative ‘lack of maturity’ of young adults, and attempts to operationalise what remains a nebulous and poorly understood concept, laden with subjectivities.