Naming Child Defendants: In the Public Interest?
| Author | Nigel Stone |
| Date | 01 April 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225414566494 |
| Published date | 01 April 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Legal Commentary |
Youth Justice
2015, Vol. 15(1) 93 –103
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225414566494
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Legal Commentary
Naming Child Defendants: In
the Public Interest?
Nigel Stone
Any principled youth justice system (YJS) has to resolve the extent to which it will afford
protection to children and young persons from being publicly identified in criminal proceed-
ings against them (and, also, of course, to minors who feature in such proceedings in other
capacities, principally as victims and/or witnesses). In other words, how should the YJS
resolve the tension between the desirability of maintaining the openness and reporting of
criminal justice and of promoting the best interests of the child? In the latter respect, guidance
can be drawn from the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN,
1989), Article 40 (vii) stating that the right of every child accused of infringing, or recognised
as having infringed, the penal law to be treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of
the child’s sense of dignity and worth shall include a guarantee ‘to have his or her privacy
fully respected at all stages of the proceedings’. Furthermore, Rule 8 of the UN Standard
Minimum Rules for the Administration of Justice (the Beijing Rules) (UN, 1985) specifies:
8.1 The juvenile’s right to privacy shall be respected at all stages in order to avoid harm being
caused to her or him by undue publicity or by the process of labelling,
8.2 In principle, no information that may lead to the identification of a juvenile offender shall
be published.1
The accompanying Commentary to the Rules reiterates:
Young persons are particularly susceptible to stigmatization. Criminological research into
labelling processes has provided evidence of the detrimental effects (of different kinds) resulting
from the permanent identification of young persons as ‘delinquent’ or ‘criminal’.
That value was recently expressed in more concrete terms by Hooper LJ in R (on the
application of Y) v Aylesbury Crown Court [2012] EWHC 1140 (Admin):
Corresponding author:
Nigel Stone, School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, Lawrence Stenhouse Building, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.
Email: n.stone@uea.ac.uk
566494YJJ0010.1177/1473225414566494Youth JusticeStone
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