Responding to Neurodivergence in the Youth Justic

6 have) (Smith-Young et al., 2022). Evidence indicates that neurodivergent girls may not receive diagnosis and support until later in life than their male peers (Klefsjö et al., 2021). There is also a significant paucity of research on diagnostic disparities in children from minoritised ethnic groups, which is a significant gap given the over-representation of these children in custodial settings, however evidence from the US indicates that there are racial disparities in diagnosis (Shi et al., 2021). Diagnosis-gated support therefore reinforces rather than corrects existing inequalities: the children least likely to be identified are precisely the children most likely to enter the justice system. The result is an implicit dichotomy of "deserving" (diagnosed) and "undeserving" (undiagnosed) children that maps onto pre- existing patterns of disadvantage and racial inequity. We also know that child poverty plays a role; children living in poverty are more likely to come into conflict with the law, as are children with neurodivergent conditions. But, when both are present, they interact synergistically – the resultant vulnerability is more than the sum of its parts (Kent et al., 2025). Psychological trauma then further complicates the picture. ‘Crossover children’ in contact with both the child welfare and child justice systems have significantly higher levels of neurodisability (Baidawi et al., 2023; Baidawi & Piquero, 2021), and children who are care-experienced have often lived through traumatic and disrupted lives. A whole-child approach which encapsulates both psychological and neurodevelopmental differences is therefore necessary. Most children who enter the formal justice system have had multiple prior contacts with the police, each representing an identification opportunity the system has not used. Children who are visibly distressed, who communicate atypically, or who respond to authority in ways shaped by trauma and neurodevelopmental difference are at elevated risk of being read as non-compliant rather than as needing support. These misreadings have a well-documented effect of propelling children further into the youth justice system, with entrenchment becoming progressively harder to reverse (Baldry et al., 2018). In our recommendation 7.10 we propose an investigation into these mechanisms of criminalisation, which should examine not only the over-criminalisation of neurodivergent children in aggregate, but the specific intersections at which disproportionality is most acute: how identification, charging, sentencing, and use of custody vary by race, gender, care experience and socioeconomic background. 6. Issues with the current response The failure to respond appropriately to the evidence indicating the vulnerability of these children is not the product of the actions of any one system, but interlocking dysfunctions across sectors. We attempt here to diagnose these issues, rather than to attribute blame. Each of these dysfunctions has evolved within a wider system over decades, and no single agency can correct these alone. The corollary is a diffusion of responsibility: where a problem belongs to every sector, it is owned by none. Our transdisciplinary lens makes this gap visible.