Decriminalising youth: Reframing ‘safety’ for racialised young people

Abstract: From the Prevent programme in schools to London’s Gangs Matrix, the mass surveillance and criminalisation of Black and Brown young people across the UK seems to be ever expanding. And with every emerging news story on ‘youth violence’, mainstream proposed solutions tend to centre around harsher punishment rather than care or support. This discussion group will reflect on what it would take to truly create spaces of safety for young people, and how carceral logics present barriers to achieving this. We will think through how racialised notions of ‘threat’ and ‘security’ are used to justify hyper-policing, and consider what a care-centred understanding of safety and safeguarding might practically look like.

Speaker: Hope Chilokoa-Mullen is a youth worker and community organiser. She currently leads the Build Power team at The 4Front Project and is active in grassroots abolitionist movements on policing, borders and education, as part of groups including No More Exclusions. She completed an MSc in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford in 2022.

This event will take place both in-person and online. The in-person event will be hosted at the Criminology Seminar Room at the Centre for Criminology (St. Cross Building, OX1 3TJ). For those attending online, register to receive a Microsoft Teams link. Note that the time is in British Standard Time.