Youth Justice Geographies and Convicted Young People's Mobilities

Currently, there is a gap in knowledge about the context of convicted young people’s youth justice journey making and its treatment. Youth justice orders can break down as a result of absence, with sentence escalation and even custody becoming possible, if problems remain unresolved. Youth justice attendance can be as low as fifty per cent, with over twenty per cent of orders breaking down in some locations. Yet a lack of statistical detail makes it impossible to establish the extent of the problem. Low income households are over-represented in the youth justice population, and such groups can have limited access to transport while experiencing difficulties accessing essential local services. Subsequently, convicted young people’s youth justice journey making and treatment needs to be better understood in order to ensure responses remain proportionate, as per existing agreements.
This thesis borrows ideas from the new mobilities paradigm, transposing them into a youth justice context, while remembering well cemented connections with social policy. Two mixed methods case studies will examine convicted young people’s youth justice journey making and treatment in locations where neighbourhood deprivation and youth justice order breakdown rates were at some of the highest in the country. Accessible visual research tools facilitated communication with young people and practitioners about youth justice journey making and absence management, to develop more fluid understandings of convicted young people’s youth justice journey making, and its treatment. The malleability and interconnectedness of journey making, attendance management and service delivery allows this research to make recommendations for national policy, local youth justice systems and individual practice. Importantly, the (re)production of convicted young people’s social inequalities as an unintended consequence of youth justice treatment, suggests the need for mobilities to have an elevated status in the delivery of social policies through youth justice services.