A webinar run by the University of Lancashire Criminal Justice Partnership examined the criminalisation of women and girls who have spent time in care.
The Ministry of Justice has acknowledged the issue. In May 2026 it published a revised and stronger version of its National Protocol. The protocol aims to reduce the unnecessary criminalisation of looked-after children and care leavers. It is a multi-agency framework intended to keep young people in care out of the justice system for low-level offending.
Dr Claire Fitzpatrick, a criminology lecturer who specialises in the subject, gave the talk. She focused on girls with care experience but stressed that boys and men face the same issues. However, she said girls are more likely to lose their liberty when convicted. She linked this to concerns about self-harm, mental health and exploitation.
Dr Fitzpatrick showed that people with care experience remain stubbornly over-represented in both the youth and adult justice systems. In England, she said, care-experienced girls are more likely than other girls to receive custodial and non-custodial sentences. Their rate of immediate custodial sentences is 25 times higher.
In England, fewer than 1 per cent of children are in care. Yet in Secure Training Centres and Young Offender Institutions, two thirds (66 per cent) of children have care experience.
The Women’s Justice Board pledged earlier this year to focus on young adult women, particularly those with care experience. The Government’s Youth Justice White Paper, also published in May, committed to strengthening the National Protocol. It stated: “We will tackle the over-criminalisation of children in care and care leavers, developing and publishing a more ambitious refreshed National Protocol in England in the coming months.”
Dr Fitzpatrick said it was all too often difficult to arrange alternatives to custody in the community for girls and young women. Opening supervised hostels proved especially hard, because local people would oppose such plans.
She said society must challenge this public attitude, which social media and the national press often feed. She also called for the use of positive, successful strategies.
