‘I’m not getting out of bed!’ The criminalisation of young people in residential care
| Author | Alison Gerard,Emma Colvin,Andrew McGrath,Kath McFarlane |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865818778739 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
‘I’m not getting out of bed!’
The criminalisation of
young people in
residential care
Alison Gerard
Centre for Law and Justice, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Andrew McGrath
School of Psychology, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Emma Colvin and Kath McFarlane
Centre for Law and Justice, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Abstract
Evidence from both Australian and international jurisdictions show that children in residential
care are over-represented in the criminal justice system. In the current study, we interviewed
46 professionals who had contact with young people in residential care settings in New South
Wales, Australia. Our sample included police officers, residential care service providers, legal
aid lawyers and juvenile justice workers, about their perceptions of the link between
residential care and contact with the criminal justice system. Factors identified by the
participants included the care environment itself, use of police as a behavioural management
tool, deficient staff training and inadequate policies and funding to address the over-
representation. These factors, combined with the legacy of Australia’s colonial past, were
a particularly potent source of criminalisation for Aboriginal children in care.
Keywords
Criminalisation, Indigenous, juvenile offending, out-of-home care, residential care
Date received: 21 September 2017; accepted: 26 April 2018
Corresponding author:
Alison Gerard, Centre for Law and Justice, Charles Sturt University, Building C6, Panorama Avenue, Bathurst,NSW
2795, Australia.
Email: agerard@csu.edu.au
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
2019, Vol. 52(1) 76–93
!The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865818778739
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Children in out-of-home care (OOHC) are significantly over-represented in the criminal
justice system both internationally and within Australia (McFarlane, 2017; Malvaso &
Delfabbro, 2015; Raman, Inder, & Forbes, 2005; Ringland, Weatherburn, & Poynton,
2015). OOHC is the provision of care by the state for children who have been removed
from their families and who are ‘looked after’ under alternative arrangements such as
foster care, care by relatives (kinship care) or residential care. While we acknowledge the
importance of foster and kinship care, our current study focusses on residential care,
and specifically on the perceptions of frontline professional staff working with children
residing in group homes. Our focus on residential care arose in part because previous
researchers have identified these contexts as being an important source of criminalisa-
tion (Cashmore, 2011), and partly because little is known about the impact of reforms
recommended by the Wood Special Commission into Child Protection Services in NSW
(Wood, 2008), which resulted in the government expanding the contracting out of
OOHC service provision to non-government agencies. We investigated respondents’
perceptions of the underlying causes of the involvement of young people in residential
care in the criminal justice system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia.
We begin by building a context of the OOHC system in Australia and in NSW, the
site of this Australian case study. We then review the international and Australian
literature on the involvement of children in residential care in the criminal justice
system. A description of our method is followed by a discussion of the key findings
of the research.
Children in OOHC
The National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children 2009–2020 (Council of
Australian Governments, 2009) states that OOHC is a last resort for keeping children
safe. Across Australia, each state and territory has different legislation providing for the
care and protection of children, including their removal into various forms of temporary
and permanent placements. These placement options may include residing with relatives
(i.e. kinship care), foster care, or residing with other with children in residential units
staffed by paid workers (i.e. residential care). There are more than 46,500 children in
OOHC in Australia and these numbers have risen every year for the past ten years
(Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW], 2017). In NSW, there are currently
just under 18,000 children in OOHC, over a third of whom are Indigenous (AIHW,
2017). The majority of children in OOHC reside in home-based placements such as
foster care (39%) or live with relatives (49%), with around 5% residing in residential
care (AIHW, 2017). The day-to-day care of these children has historically been provided
by both the relevant government department (currently known as Family and
Community Services, or FACS) and by non-government agencies. As a result of reforms
recommended by the Wood Special Commission into Child Protection Services in NSW
(Wood, 2008), the government expanded the contracting out of OOHC service provision
resulting in secular, large-scale, for-profit private organisations entering a market that
was previously dominated by more traditional, often religious-based, not-for-profit
agencies (McFarlane, 2017).
The blurred boundaries between young people’s involvement in state care and the
criminal justice system has a long history. Whilst the majority of young people do not
Gerard et al. 77
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