Child First and the end of ‘bifurcation’ in youth justice?
Journal of Children's Services
ISSN: 1746-6660
Article publication date: 4 July 2023
Issue publication date: 17 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to critically evaluate the trajectory of the “Child First” guiding principle for youth justice in England and Wales, which challenges adult-centric constructions of children (when they offend) as “threatening” and asserts a range of theoretical and principled assumptions about the nature of childhood and children’s evolving capacity.
Design/methodology/approach
Focussing on how Child First seeks to transcend the socio-historically bifurcated (polarised/dichotomised) thinking and models/strategies/frameworks of youth justice, this study examines the extent and nature of this binary thinking and its historical and contemporary influence on responses to children’s offending, latterly manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches.
Findings
Analyses identified an historical and contemporary influence on bifurcated responses to offending by children in the United Kingdom/England and Wales, subsequently manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches. Analyses also identified a contemporary, progressive challenge to bifurcated youth justice thinking, policy and practice through the “Child First” guiding principle.
Originality/value
By tracing the trajectory of Child First as an explicit, progressive challenge to previous youth justice thinking and formal “approaches”, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to question whether, in taking this approach, Child First represents a clean break with the past, or is just the latest in a series of strategic realignments in youth justice seeking to resolve inherent tensions between competing constructions of children and their behaviour.
Keywords
Citation
Case, S. and Smith, R. (2023), "Child First and the end of ‘bifurcation’ in youth justice?", Journal of Children's Services, Vol. 18 No. 3/4, pp. 180-194. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCS-02-2023-0005
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited