Care-criminalisation: The involvement of children in out-of-home care in the New South Wales criminal justice system

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 412-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kath McFarlane
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Home Care ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Out Of Home Care ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Children's Court ◽  
Children’S Court

This article discusses the involvement in the New South Wales criminal justice system of a cohort of children in out-of-home care. The paper reports the findings of a four-year research project that investigated the relationship between the child welfare and justice systems as experienced by a cohort of children in the New South Wales Children’s Court criminal jurisdiction. Analysis of 160 case files identified that children in out-of-home care appeared before the Children’s Court on criminal charges at disproportionate rates compared to children who were not in out-of-home care. The out-of-home care cohort had a different and negative experience of the justice system, entering it at a significantly younger age and being more likely to experience custodial remand, than children who had not been in out-of-home care. While both cohorts shared many of the risk factors common to young offenders appearing before the Children’s Court, the out-of-home care cohort experienced significant additional disadvantage within the care environment (‘care-criminalisation’), such that living arrangements designed to protect them from harm instead created the environment for offending. The paper concludes by arguing that a paucity of research exists regarding the drivers and dynamics of care-criminalisation and that more research is needed to explore the criminogenic impacts of a childhood spent in out-of-home care.

scholarly journals Imposed Stories: Prisoner Self-narratives in the Criminal Justice System in New South Wales, Australia

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie Hall ◽  
Kate Rossmanith
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
South Wales

This article examines the ways in which offenders are required to provide very particular accounts of themselves and to self-narrate in confined ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in the New South Wales justice system, it explores how the stories that offenders are made to accept and tell about themselves often bear little relationship to their own reflections. It analyses how, despite the expectations of judges and prison authorities, these self-narratives are not products of an offender’s soul-searching concerning his past actions and experience; rather they are products of an official legal narrative being imposed on an offender whose capacity to own and enact such a narrative is already seriously compromised.

The Prosecution of Child Sexual Assault: A Survey of NSW DPP Solicitors

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Cashmor
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Full Advantage ◽  
Justice System ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Child Witnesses ◽  
Child Sexual Assault ◽  
South Wales

Over the last decade, there has been a number of changes in the law and in courtroom procedures in relation to the prosecution of child sexual assault. These changes were intended to ease the restrictions on the admission of children's evidence and to make the experience of testifying less stressful for child witnesses. Court statistics on the outcome of child sexual assault prosecutions and the results of a survey by the NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of prosecuted cases of child sexual assault in New South Wales were examined to throw some light on the way such prosecutions and the child witnesses involved were dealt with in the criminal justice system. One of the major concerns was that while some reforms have allowed more and younger children to give evidence, full advantage has not been taken of other reforms to ease children's experience at court.

scholarly journals ‘Just another policy document?’ Can a protocol end the criminalisation of kids in care?

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
Kath McFarlane ◽  
Emma Colvin ◽  
Andrew McGrath ◽  
Alison Gerard
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Justice System ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Policy Document ◽  
Out Of Home Care ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Home Care Providers

This article examines the New South Wales Joint Protocol to Reduce the Contact of Young People in Residential OOHC with the Criminal Justice System (2016 ) from the perspective of residential out-of-home-care providers, police, lawyers and departmental staff involved in the child welfare and criminal justice systems in New South Wales.

Rescission or Variation of Children's Court Orders: A Study of Section 90 Applications in New South Wales

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Hansen
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Community Services ◽  
Parental Responsibility ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Court Orders ◽  
Children's Court ◽  
Children’S Court

This article reports on a study of Children's Court files relating to completed applications for variation of care orders (section 90 applications) in three specialised Children's Courts in New South Wales. All files that could be located for completed applications were reviewed and nonidentifying data was recorded. The study attempted to examine the type of applications, the characteristics of applicants and the outcomes of the applications. One hundred and seventeen applications were reviewed: almost half of these were made by the then Department of Community Services (DoCS), and about the same proportion of applications were made by parents. After the section 90 applications were determined there was an increase in care orders allocating parental responsibility to the Minister for Community Services with 73% of the children placed under the care of the minister to age 18.

scholarly journals ‘“problem” children of this community’: Christ Church St Laurence and the Children’s Court, Sydney, 1936-41

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-98
Author(s):  
Patricia Curthoys
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
Children's Court ◽  
Children’S Court

This article seeks to explore the experiences of those boys who, in late 1930s/ early 1940s Sydney, were considered, by the courts and the churches, amongst others, to be 'the "problem" children of this community'. The sources for this exploration are the records of the Metropolitan Children's Court, Surry Hills and the Christ Church St Laurence Boys' Welfare Bureau. Children's courts were established in New South Wales in 1905. From 1934 onwards all metropolitan cases were heard at Surry Hills. The Boys' Welfare Bureau was established in April 1936 by Christ Church St Laurence, an Anglican church situated near Central Railway Station, Sydney. The records of the Bureau and the Court provide insights into the ways in which both religion and the law attempted to shape the lived experience of these boys, in inner city Sydney, within the context of current ideas about juvenile delinquency and its treatment.

scholarly journals Contact and Adoption Plans for Children Adopted from Out-of-home Care in New South Wales

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty Luu ◽  
Amy Conley Wright ◽  
Judith Cashmore
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Out Of Home Care ◽  
South Wales

Establishing Adoption as a Route Out of Care in New South Wales: A Commentary

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Ainsworth ◽  
Patricia Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Foster Care ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Open Adoption ◽  
South Wales ◽  
The Us ◽  
Realistic Possibility ◽  
Children's Court ◽  
Children’S Court

Over the last 25 years (1990–2015), the number of adoptions of children (and young persons) in Australia declined from 1,142 to 292 (25.5 %). Of the 292 adoptions that took place in 2014–15, 83 (28%) were inter country adoptions, with the remaining 209 (72 %) adoptions of Australian children. Very few of the adoptions of Australian children were in New South Wales. In amendments in 2014 to the New South Wales Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 and the Adoptions Act 2000, a new emphasis on ‘open’ adoption was introduced. The focus of these amendments is on adoption of children who are in foster care where the New South Wales Children's Court has ruled that there is no realistic possibility of restoration of the child to parental care. This article is about the implementation of this new legislative emphasis on adoption. It does not examine the benefit or otherwise of adoption for children who cannot be safely restored to parental care as this issue has been extensively canvassed elsewhere. This article also highlights the US and English experience of adoption from care in order to place the New South Wales development in perspective. The article concludes with discussion of the issues adoption raises for the parents of a child who is being considered for adoption from care.

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