Risks, Needs and Discrimination: Examining the Fairness of Assessment and Planning Frameworks for Youth Justice Interventions

该奖学金旨在促进关于青少年越轨行为、养育子女和体制歧视之间交叉点的文献发展。对由个人和家庭风险因素引发的青少年犯罪的理解已经扎根于犯罪学理论和英国的青少年司法实践（Farrington 2003）。然而，研究已经揭示了制度的选择效应，这些制度不仅基于年轻人挑战行为的严重性，还根据他们的家庭声誉和社会劣势（McAra和McVie 2007）。由于这种影响在很大程度上仍未被探索，我的博士研究考察了青年司法、警察、教育、早期干预、心理健康和志愿部门的从业人员是否根据家庭的社会地位不同地对待有法律问题的年轻人及其父母，以及机构工作实践对这些过程的影响。我发现，对青少年罪犯的干预侧重于管理他们的风险和脆弱性，但这种治疗可能会引导不同社会经济背景的客户走上不同的道路。在申请奖学金期间，我将首先把我的博士论文发展成专著，把我的博士后论文发展成期刊文章，并参加国际会议，向同行学者传播我的研究成果。为了使我的博士研究产生最大的影响，我将回到参与我研究的机构，并以报告的形式向他们展示我的研究结果。我将通过在学术平台、项目的社交媒体账户和网站上分享我的工作，提高公众对我的发现的认识。为了鼓励知识交流，我将举办一个为期一天的研讨会，汇集青年司法领域的学者、决策者和实践者。其次，在学习期间，我将提高我的教学和研究技能。在牛津大学法律系，我将在青年司法、犯罪与家庭、定性方法以及犯罪学和刑事司法等主题上举办研讨会。我将通过参加法学院提供的讲习班和系列研讨会，与犯罪学、法律和社会法律研究领域的早期职业研究人员和资深学者分享我的发现。我还将与来自其他领域（教育、精神病学、互联网研究）的研究人员合作，作为“被排斥生活项目”的一部分，该项目正在从多学科的角度研究英国各地学校排斥的做法和儿童被排斥后的轨迹。第三，我将在博士学位的基础上进一步进行有限的研究。在我的博士后研究中，我将研究在设计青少年司法干预措施时评估年轻人的风险和需求是否、如何以及为什么会产生歧视。我将探讨歧视的不同方面（例如，根据社会阶层、种族、民族、性别、残疾），以及当从业者使用风险评估工具时，它们如何相交。我将在牛津郡的一个青少年犯罪小组（YOT）进行我的研究。我之所以选择这个研究网站，是因为青少年服务处为犯罪或有犯罪风险的儿童提供服务。此外，专业人员必须使用标准化的风险评估指南，以了解yt内的日常实践。最后，我将在博士后研究员、资深学者和法学院研究支持和管理团队的帮助下，制定未来的拨款申请。我的目标是追求ESCR新调查员补助金，英国科学院博士后奖学金或Leverhulme早期职业奖学金，以研究具体的政治，法律和社会文化背景如何影响英格兰，威尔士，苏格兰和北爱尔兰青年司法风险评估的公平性。

The Fellowship aims to contribute to the developing literature on the intersections between youth deviance, parenting and institutional discrimination. Understandings of youth crime as triggered by individual and familial risk factors have anchored themselves in criminological theory and the UK's youth justice practice (Farrington 2003). However, research has exposed the selection effects of institutions that propel young people into the system not only based on the seriousness of their challenging behaviour, but also according to their family's reputation and their social disadvantage (McAra and McVie 2007). As such effects have remained largely unexplored, my doctoral research examined whether practitioners within youth justice, the police, education, early intervention, mental health and the voluntary sector treat young people in trouble with the law and their parents differently according to the family's social status, as well as the impacts of institutional working practices on these processes. I found that interventions with young offenders focus on managing their risks and vulnerabilities, but this kind of treatment might be leading clients of different socioeconomic backgrounds on diverse pathways. During the proposed Fellowship, I will, firstly, develop my doctoral thesis into a monograph, my postdoctoral papers into journal articles, and attend international conferences to disseminate my research findings to fellow academics. To maximise the impact of my doctoral research, I will return to the institutions that participated in my study and present my results to them in the form of a report. I will raise awareness about my findings to the general public by sharing my work on academic platforms, the project's social media account and website. To encourage knowledge exchange, I will organise a one-day symposium that will bring together academics, policy-makers and practitioners within youth justice. In the course of the Fellowship, I will, secondly, advance my teaching and research-related skills. Within Oxford's Law Faculty, I will contribute seminars in the subjects of Youth Justice, Crime and the Family, Qualitative Methods as well as Criminology and Criminal Justice. I will share my findings with early career researchers and senior academics in the fields of criminology, law and socio-legal studies by partaking in workshops and seminar series offered by the Law Faculty. I will also collaborate with researchers from other fields (education, psychiatry, internet studies) as part of the Excluded Lives Project that is examining the practices of school exclusion and the trajectories of children post-exclusion across the UK from a multidisciplinary perspective.Thirdly, I will carry out further limited research based on my doctorate. In my postdoctoral study, I will examine whether, how and why assessing young people's risks and needs when designing youth justice interventions can play out discriminatorily. I will explore the different aspects of discrimination (e.g. according to social class, race, ethnicity, gender, disability) and how they intersect when practitioners employ risk assessment tools. I will conduct my research within one Youth Offending Team (YOT) in Oxfordshire. I have chosen this research site as YOTs provide services to children who offend or are 'at risk' of offending. Furthermore, the daily practices within YOTs are informed by standardised risk assessment guidelines that professionals are required to use. Lastly, I will develop future grant applications with the help of fellow postdoctoral researchers, senior academics, and the Law Faculty's Research Support and Administration Team. I aim to pursue an ESCR New Investigator Grant, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship or a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to examine how specific political, legal and socio-cultural contexts impact upon the fairness of risk assessment within youth justice in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.