Responding to Neurodivergence in the Youth Justic

7 Identification and assessment occur too late, or not at all. Despite the prevalence data, validated screening tools are not routinely deployed at the point of arrest, charge or first court appearance. Where identification does occur, it is often too late in the process to affect diversion, plea or sentencing decisions. Identification systems remain calibrated to children who present for diagnosis in healthcare settings, which structurally excludes the children most likely to enter the justice system. These children are therefore inadequately supported across both education and health systems prior to contact with the justice system: health pathways that could identify need early (even before school age) are not reaching them, and where education would ordinarily instigate identification, the children most likely to end up in the justice system are often excluded from school or have disrupted schooling journeys (Kirby, 2016; Middleton, 2025). Diversion is under-utilised. The UNCRC identifies diversion as a crucial component of any child justice system, and diversion can produce strong outcomes for children with neurodevelopmental conditions where appropriate support is in place. Diversion is important both to prevent justice system contact in the first place (through interventions earlier in life), and to prevent children entering the secure estate once they have had contact with the police. Police custody, for example, should only ever be used as a matter of last resort, but evidence suggests that this is not currently happening as the majority of children who spend time in police custody suites receive ‘no further action’ as their case outcome (Kemp, 2023). Universal accessibility is not the default . Justice system procedures are rigid, complex, and difficult to navigate for all children, but especially those with neurodivergent conditions (Hughes, Sheahan, et al., 2020). Universal accessibility would mean building these processes so that they are clear and navigable for every child by default, so that no child needs a diagnosis or formal identification to understand their rights and take part in proceedings. The adaptations this requires, such as accessible language, checks for understanding, and less rigid procedures, would benefit all children. But without them, neurodivergent children with executive function difficulties, communication impairments or learning disability are at heightened risk of waiving rights they do not understand, accepting plea agreements without comprehending consequences, and making false confessions in police interviews (Gilbert et al., 2022). Expressive language difficulty is widely misread as rudeness or non-compliance, affecting decisions by police, prosecutors and judicial officers (Holloway-George et al., 2025). Universal accessibility measures are not currently the norm. Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) are configured around risk-suppression, not therapeutic care. The institutional culture in YOIs is organised around the prevention of violence and the management of children as risks - separating children living on different wings, applying behavioural sanctions, restricting movement - rather than around truly relational practice, identity-building or credible release pathways. YOIs were designed in an era, and around a population, that no longer matches the children now held in them. The operating model has not yet caught up with the evidence base or with the demographic profile of the current custodial cohort, and is not currently configured to deliver developmentally informed, neurodisability-aware care at scale. Where specialist support is unavailable, the