Care Experience, Ethnicity and Criminal Justice Involvement

Project Dates

January - December 2022

Funder

ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK), an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) investment

Project Summary

The research aims to address an important gap in knowledge with regards the intersections between ethnicity and care experience in youth/adult criminal justice involvement.  In doing so, this Fellowship will focus on four aims:

• To investigate the proportion of individuals with experience of the looked after system and the details of offending (offence type, frequency and disposal including sentence length) (A1). 
• To ascertain whether offending profile (offence type, frequency and disposal including sentence length) varies according to ethnicity and/or legal status and placement type (A2). 
• To compare for care experienced and non-care experienced individuals sentence length for three offence types (ABH, robbery and possession of an article with blade or point), and whether these relationships vary by ethnicity (A3). 
• To investigate factors (offender characteristics, legal status, placement type) associated with frequency of offending for care experienced individuals (A4).  

The key outcomes of the research will be an enhanced understanding of how care experience and ethnicity interact with offending in England.

Research Team

Project Lead: Dr Katie Hunter

Project Mentors: Dr Claire Fitzpatrick (Law School) and Professor Brian Francis (Maths and Stats)

External Collaborators

Project Partner: Barnardo's

Contact

For further information, please contact: Dr Katie Hunter (k.hunter4@lancaster.ac.uk)