PUBLICATIONS

To ensure consistency across all published materials, this guide sets out clear communication standards for our team. Grounded in our core values, this guide aims to ensure that the language we use is rights based, child centred and challenges systemic inequality. We are sharing this resource in the hope that it proves useful for members own communications.

AYJ response to the Justice Select Committee inquiry into childrena nd young adults in the secure estate.

The AYJ has responded to a Department for Education consultation on establishing a new Child Protection Authority in England. The response summarises views gathered from AYJ members on strengthening national child protection systems, recognising children in the youth justice system as a priority safeguarding group, and ensuring youth justice data and expertise are included in the authority’s work.

The AYJ has responded to a Crown Prosecution Service consultation on its guidance on “gang” related offences and the use of musical expression as evidence. The response summarises views gathered from AYJ members on the use of the term “gang”, racial disproportionality, and the need for separate guidance on musical expression in evidence.

The briefing draws from an evidence review; a consultation session bringing together professionals from the youth and adult criminal justice sector, voluntary and community sector, legal practitioners, and academia. It also draws from meetings and interviews with practitioners, subject matter experts, and civil servants.

Our submission to the Justice Select Committee highlights the urgent need to improve conditions in the children’s secure estate, ensure custody is only ever a last resort, and address racial disparities in reoffending rates.

This briefing calls on the government to protect and promote a child centred children’s secure estate, with custody only ever a last resort. It also calls for developing a distinct approach to custody for young adults.

In response to the development of a Youth Custody Service (YCS) Youth Custody Strategy, this paper sets out AYJ positions on the essential elements of a strategic approach to the children’s secure estate.

This briefing urges the government to take bold action to reimagine youth justice. We set out changes new Ministers must prioritise to ensure a safeguarding response to vulnerable children, end racial injustice, and guarantee that custody is a last resort.

This second report from the Young Advocates Project presents findings from engagement with 90 children and young people across England and Wales, and focuses on the three priority topics of criminalisation, policing, and intervention and diversion. The aim was to explore the routes into the justice system for young people, as compared to pathways out and away from it.

This briefing, part of a project funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust, explores how racially minoritised young people experience particularly destabilising transitions to adulthood due to deficits in support before and after turning 18. It highlights the crucial role the ‘by and for’ voluntary and community sector plays in addressing these shortfalls.