Wherever we might care to look in the world, youth justice systems disproportionately draw in some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children (see Goldson et al. 2020). Globally, there is a stark over-representation of children who have been in out of home care (Brownell et al. 2021; Colvin et al. 2020; Videl et al. 2019). However, the over-representation of care-experienced girls has been missing from mainstream dialogues. Less still has been said about the experiences of girls from minority ethnic backgrounds (Fitzpatrick et al. 2022; Hunter et al. 2023). In England and Wales, such over-representation has deep roots whereby negative assumptions based on gender, race and social class have permeated debates about criminality (Carlen, 1988; Gilroy, 1987). Despite longstanding knowledge of these issues, high-profile reviews (see Prison Reform Trust, 2016) and policy attention (DfE, Home Office & MoJ, 2018), the over-representation of care-experienced children has intensified as the overall number of children entering the youth justice system in England and Wales has fallen (Hunter et al. 2023). Moreover, qualitative evidence has highlighted how gender and care status may interact to create overlapping layers of structural disadvantage, with girls having specific, multifaceted routes into justice systems (see Fitzpatrick et al. 2022). An ADR UK Fellowship project using newly linked administrative datasets from the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education has now quantified the relationship between care experience, gender and youth justice involvement in England. This paper will demonstrate that care-experienced girls are particularly likely to have youth justice involvement compared to girls who have not been in care, and that the gap in youth justice involvement between girls and boys is narrower for those with care experience. Taking a critical perspective, this paper will reflect on the potential for administrative data to challenge such injustices and effect real change.

Campaigning families have been described as vital players in the campaign process (Savage et al, 2007). They are driven by the emotional bond between family members and those they have lost as a result of a miscarriage of justice. Campaigning families can provide the glue to a campaign (Savage, 2007), ensuring endurance in the face of inevitable challenges over time. Other people within the campaign can be mobilised by families and the campaign momentum can be sustained and taken forward.

There is a long history between the media and miscarriages of justice, with evidence of media involvement in investigating cases from over 100 years ago (Poyser, 2012). Whilst the media might be said to have ‘fallen out of love’ with miscarriages for a period during the first decade of the 21st century; more recently, there has been not only a surge in television dramas and documentaries on the phenomenon, but also an increase in new media in the form of true crime podcasts. This presentation will explore the relationship between campaigning families and miscarriages of justice campaigns and explore their use of the media. The presentation will conclude by looking at whether the media is failing victims of miscarriages of justice.

Wayward Girls in Victorian and Edwardian England, Pathways in and out of Juvenile Institutions, 1854-1920

Delinquent, Wayward, ‘at risk’, re-socialising, protection, licence

Solutions for dealing with ‘delinquent’ or ‘wayward’ girls has been a source of discussion and contention since the establishment of the first juvenile institutions in the nineteenth-century. The Youthful Offenders Act (1854) and the Industrial Schools Act (1857) marked a watershed moment in the history of the treatment of juveniles by establishing Reformatory and Industrial schools. Never had state-run juvenile institutions been set up on such a scale across England. Reformatory Schools were reserved for girls who committed a criminal offence whereas Industrial schools were for those girls deemed ‘at risk’ and in need of protection. This paper will explore three specific juvenile institutions; namely, Red Lodge Reformatory, Manchester Sale and Carlton Industrial School. Utilising historical archives and digital records the research examines the lived experiences of working-class girls’ pre-adulthood and the licences exposing how they navigated their early adulthood, thus providing an original contribution to the scholarship on juvenile delinquency and crime history literature. These historical institutions for girls, Reformatory and Industrial schools, served a critical role in re-socialising working class girls along middle-class feminine codes of ‘moral respectable’ behaviour. The past incarceration of females and the ‘ideology’ within the institutions which surrounded the reform of ‘wayward’ and ‘at risk’ girls are significant as they embedded the foundations of the penal and care institutions for girls.