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Offending behaviour in care: is children's residential care a ‘criminogenic’ environment?
Author(s) -
Hayden Carol
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
child and family social work
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.912
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1365-2206
pISSN - 1356-7500
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2206.2010.00697.x
Subject(s) - residential care , set (abstract data type) , psychology , gerontology , medicine , computer science , programming language
This paper focuses on offending behaviour and children in residential care. The paper considers whether children's residential care is a ‘criminogenic’ environment, i.e. whether this type of care environment helps to provide the conditions that produce crime or criminality. The paper draws on the findings from recently completed research on 10 children's homes in a large county local authority in England. This paper focuses on the patterns shown in trend data collected on problematic and offending data across these homes over a 7‐year period (2001–2007) and a 1‐year cohort study of 46 young people. Interviews with care staff and young people are used to contextualize these patterns. The data provide evidence of an environment where conflict and offending behaviour are common. It is argued that the residential care environment, particularly for older teenagers, often presents a set of risks that tend to reinforce offending behaviour and that this is in part due to its ‘last resort’ status.