A wealth of research over the last two decades has conclusively demonstrated that imprisonment and criminal justice contact can be deeply harmful for families and communities, contributing to relationship breakdowns, poor outcomes for children, and entrenching social and racial inequalities. It is also clear that many justice-impacted families already experience high levels of social marginalization such as poverty, racism, poor housing and a lack of community supports. This raises important questions as to how families navigate their entanglements with the justice system, how they survive profound social harms, and what state agencies might do better to ameliorate this damage and to promote social justice. This panel will consider these questions through a range of lenses, including: shame and stigma, youth justice practice, deaths in custody, and criminal justice policy processes.

Convenor: Francesca Pilotto

Maria Adams and Daniel McCarthy, University of Surrey: Anti-racist lens approach to understanding the needs of parents of young people under the Youth Justice system.

Rikki Wolkind, University of Edinburgh: Prison, Policy and the Family – examining the constructive role of prison policy in the lives of families across England and Scotland.

Nancy Loucks, University of Strathclyde: Responding to deaths in custody.

Roonaq un Nisa and Anna Eriksson, Tata Institute of Social Sciences: Children of Prisoners in Kashmir: Symbiotic harms in the shadows of conflict and shame.

Over the coming years, the number of young people in the youth justice system has drastically declined, but there is a disproportionate number of black young people still in the youth justice system. Furthermore, there has been a cultural shift in the YJS from managing risk to First Child’s Approach that is centred on understanding the narratives of each young person. However, there has been little understanding about the families’ narratives, and where are parents/carers positioned when it comes to ‘First Child Approach’. Drawing on Action-Based research, this study explores the relationship between practitioners and families from two youth justice services in the Southeast of England- to understand on how we can strengthen the parent/carer partnerships with the youth justice system. This presentation will address on three areas: 1) understanding the challenges/tensions for parents/ carers; 2) exploring the strategies that have been deployed in light of this First Child Approach; 3) and lastly, identifying ways to strengthen family support from an Anti-Racist lens, and whether this lens works.