'The thing that made me want to prove myself was the judge’: Children, Communication and the Sentencing Courts

Abstract

Each year, thousands of children are sentenced in the criminal courts; about five per cent of which are in the adult Crown Court. Remarkably, given the immediate and longer-term impacts, the sentencing process and in particular sentence delivery has received relatively little attention from a children’s rights perspective in either the courts or in academic scholarship. Drawing on a qualitative study with justice-experienced children, this paper examines children’s meaning-making in relation to the sentencing process. It offers an interpretation of their views of the sentencing process and their responses to different judicial styles or approaches to sentence delivery, and it considers the implications for a rights-based system for sentencing children.