Vicky Kemp

Children, Young People and Requests for Police Station Legal Advice: 25 years on from PACE

Informed by data extracted from 30,921 police electronic custody records, drawn from 44 police stations across four police force areas and including 5153 records of juveniles aged 10 to 17 years, this article examines the take-up of legal advice by children and young people in police stations in England and Wales. There are wide variations in the extent to which juveniles request and receive legal advice when compared to adults but also between juveniles of different ages. Such variations are explored both in relation to the age of detainees and the type and seriousness of offence and case disposal. Also examined are variations based on different police force areas. The implications emanating from children’s differential access to legal advice at police stations are considered in relation to children’s rights.

Book Review: Juvenile Delinquency in the United States and the United Kingdom

community might be applied to prison education. The report covers the context of prison education; the content and quality of education received; the boys’ expectations of prison education; the extent to which provision meets identified needs; and support for boys returning to education in the community. The role of the Youth Offending Team (YOT) is examined, particularly the education workers, and examples of good practice are identified in relation to liaison between education departments inside and outside of the prison. The research highlights important issues about inconsistencies in the quality and range of prison education available across the 13 prisons visited, and the impoverished links that exist between many prison establishments and community education providers. Starting from a position that sending school-age children to prison is detrimental to their education, the key recommendations from the report include a request that ‘education (for children in prison) . . . be seen as part of a broader system which includes the educational opportunities available after release and which is focused on the needs and interests of the individual boy’. There is, however, a serious omission within the report, and therefore in the research itself; as the issue of ‘race’ is not addressed at any point. This is a weakness in an otherwise hard-hitting report. It is widely recognised that institutionalised racism means that Black children and young people are over-represented in the criminal justice system: of the Missing the Grade (self report) research sample, 23% of boys are Black or of mixed race. Census data from 1991 shows African Caribbean children are at least six times more likely to be excluded from school. It is regrettable that the link between ‘race’, exclusions, offending and custody is not addressed by this report. The findings from the report should, nevertheless, inform the current Youth Justice Board review into educational provision within the secure estate, and the debates surrounding it.

Book review: H Quirk, The Rise and Fall of the Right of Silence

personal belongings without due process, which led to legal restrictions against the practice. At the same time, officers attempted to tell their own side of the story while being filmed in hopes of neutralizing the political and legal power of the videos being taken. This section encapsulates a central theme of the book which is that both officers and the public in highly policed areas make constant street level adjustments to each other while embedded in political dynamics largely beyond their control. The one possible weakness of the book is that more of that political context might have been of interest in helping us understand the origins and goals of the Safer Cities Initiative. In the end, Stuart points out that reducing the burden of policing on the poor cannot be achieved through diversion programs or training police to be more like social workers. Instead we should ask why the police, whose main tools are handcuffs, batons, and guns, are being asked to be the primary government agents tasked with addressing homelessness, mental illness, substance abuse, and unemployment. Instead of relying on police, we need to rebuild a social safety net that protects people from the market forces that have created mass homelessness. While the current political moment makes structural reform seem “hopelessly idealistic if not naïve” (p. 267), we must realize that the solutions on offer now are dehumanizing and ineffective.

Incentivising disputes: The role of public funding in private law children cases

This article sets out the findings of a study of 280 publicly‐funded private law children cases and associated interviews. It illustrates how both the cost and duration of such cases have increased substantially over the past few years and suggests that this may partly be as a consequence of increasing complexity. However, the article also illustrates how the legal aid scheme can act to promote delay and cost inflation within family cases. In particular, it illustrates how legal aid practice is susceptible to supplier‐induced demand, how legal aid remuneration rates can encourage inefficient forms of ‘juniorisation’ and how repeat applications to the courts are facilitated by the availability of legal aid. The article also examines the effect of changes which have sought to promote the early resolution of cases. Finally, it suggests that, while reform proposals may go some way towards restructuring incentives to settle cases, the increasing complexity of cases and the centrality of the legal framework in their proposed resolution suggest that the impact of the proposals may be limited.