20 MAY 2026

TRYJustice Meeting 19th May 2026

On 19th May 2026, members of the TryJustice network met in London for their bi-annual multi-disciplinary position statement planning. Coming together from across the country, colleagues brought together lived experience, learnt experience, professional experience and academic research backgrounds to discuss the topic: ‘Reducing Racial Disproportionality in Remand for children’.

The discussion began with an Expert Speaker who provided the background to the topic. This included information such as, 62% of children on remand do not go on to receive a custodial sentence, and also included explanation of a new system to bring together data from different sources in order to provide a fuller picture of the experiences of children within the criminal justice system.

Areas of discussion included;

· The differences and commonalities between the Scottish and English systems.

· The school-to-prison pipeline.

· The use and experience of school exclusion.

· Child-first approaches.

· Restorative justice philosophy and approaches.

· Social work policies and practices.

· Local authority responsibilities and corporate parenting.

· Culture within the police, the secure estate, education and local authorities.

· Minoritised groups of children, including those with Special Educational Needs and neurodivergence; those with looked-after or care experience; those classified within particular ethnic groups, including Gypsy, Roma and Traveller; those from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds; and those living in violent homes.

· Harm caused to children by the systems of the Criminal Justice System and allied organisations. In particular the harmful situations which children experience within the process of remand, including unsafe community spaces; inappropriate remand placements; adversarial legal systems; court experiences which particularly exclude children from minoritised groups.

· The blame assigned to parents

· Normative, racist and ableist attitudes which manifest within the Criminal Justice System and other systems which children come into contact with.

· The positive work being carried out by individual practitioners and third-sector organisations.

· The tensions between transparency of the data collected about children and young people in the Criminal Justice System and the potential impact of this data which are partial , or flawed, or data which are selectively misinterpreted, or interpreted for particular gain.

· The need for those with lived experience of the Criminal Justice System to be heard, and the potential those with lived experience have to work supportively and transformatively within the Criminal Justice System.

· The use of language and its impact on children who enter the criminal justice system.

Additional contextualisation was also provide by the release, just a few hours before the start of the meeting, of the Ministry of Justice White Paper, ‘Cutting Youth Crime. Changing Young Lives: The youth justice system reform and delivery plan’, which includes a proposal of reducing the use of remand for children by 25%.

The outcome of these discussions is a draft Position Statement, which brings together the multidisciplinary perspectives of the network. This Position Statement will be refined over the next few weeks and will present proposals to address the disproportionate use of remand and to also explain and explore areas of tension for deeper exploration. This will be made available on the TryJustice website and disseminated more widely.

Written by Dr Tristan Middleton, Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Education at the University of Gloucestershire