Criminal court sentencing: the case for specialist ‘young adult’ courts

Ward, Jennifer ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3018-2859 and Spence, Ruth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6197-9975 (2022) Criminal court sentencing: the case for specialist ‘young adult’ courts. British Journal of Criminology . ISSN 0007-0955 [Article] (Published online first) (doi:10.1093/bjc/azac076)

PDF - Final accepted version (with author's formatting) Restricted to Repository staff and depositor only until 19 October 2024. Download (296kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Treating young adults (18-25-year olds) as a distinct group within the criminal justice system is receiving growing support. This paper asks three specific questions. Should specialist young adult courts be introduced so that young age and developing maturity are considered with more consistency across court sentencing; should social background factors be taken into account when appraising culpability and have the 2019 ‘sentencing guidelines’ that give judicial direction for sentence mitigation gone far enough? The paper argues significant gains in sentencing policy have been made, but a specialist young adult court model would ensure a dedicated response to this age group and would foster a shared courts working culture that pursues the common goals of rehabilitation and social pedagogic interventions.

Actions (login required)

View Item

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Activity Overview

6 month trend

7Downloads

6 month trend

89Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.