Youth Custody, Resettlement and the Right to Social Justice

Abstract

Rapid increases in rates of youth custody until quite recently, and breaches of human rights inside institutions for young offenders in England and Wales, have been a repeated source of criticism among youth justice commentators. However, this article focuses on the issue of resettlement to argue that current attempts to improve resettlement provision for young people leaving custody are beset with failure because of the way the concept of resettlement has been interpreted by policy makers. Instead of acknowledging broader structural constraints arising from poverty and socio-economic disadvantage, young people’s social needs on release from custody have been individualized and equated with correcting perceived personal deficits. The end result is that the concept of resettlement has been criminalized, as young people’s needs on leaving custody have been framed in a discourse of individual pathology and responsibilization. The article concludes by considering how young people’s resettlement needs could be advanced through the development of a transformative rights based approach which, while framed around the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, is informed by social justice ideals.