Why are young care leavers being sucked into crime?

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/07/care-leavers-sucked-into-crime

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“It was everybody I trusted as a child. Everybody who was supposed to look after me. Sooner or later they abused me. I didn’t have my mum there to look after me,” says Deborah Samuel. Sitting in her one-bedroom flat in east London, Samuel, now 46, recounts at speed her traumatic childhood in and out of children’s care homes and secure units from the age of 10 to 17, after her parents died.

“I was severely sexually abused in most of the homes,” she recalls. By 16, she says, she was coerced into prostitution and went to jail or was held on remand, she thinks, on 60 occasions – for crimes including drugs, deception and prostitution.

Samuel’s story is appalling and extraordinary. But her fate is mirrored in the stories of many other looked-after children sucked into the criminal justice system. An independent review recently launched by the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) charity aims to examine why children in care are five times more likely than their peers to come into contact with the criminal justice system. The investigation, chaired by Lord Laming, is expected to report in early 2016.

“By listening to the experiences of children in care and involving them actively in the process of the review, we are determined to ensure it makes practical recommendations to enable key services to work together to help these children transform their life chances and stay out of trouble,” says Laming.

One purpose of the review is to examine why 61% of girls in custody have backgrounds in care compared with a third of boys, according to a sample of 942 male (76% of those in custody in 2012-13) and 16 female (88%) 10- to 17-year-olds. Juliet Lyon, the PRT director, says: “Reasons why so many young women behind bars have spent time in care are likely to include the high level of vulnerability, mental health need, emotional damage, neglect, and drug and alcohol addiction.”

Natasha Finlayson, chief executive of The Who Cares? Trust, a charity that supports children from care, and a member of the review panel, believes a “complex relationship between offending and prior experience of sexual abuse” may well be a factor.

The only time I got attention was when I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. So you keep doing it

According to the latest statistics, the main reason children are taken into care is because of abuse or neglect (62%). Of those who are sexually abused, “the vast majority” are girls, says Finlayson. “Young females in care who have been sexually exploited often feel there is nowhere for that anger to go, no one is picking up on the signals they’re giving out. So offending behaviour can be partly a way of expressing anger and partly a way of suddenly having professionals around them paying them attention, which previously hasn’t happened.”

This was certainly Samuel’s experience: “The only time I got attention was when I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. So you keep doing it,” she says.

Finlayson adds: “The care system is good at keeping young people safe, it’s not good at helping them to heal from trauma experienced in childhood.”

There are indications the trend of care leavers ending up in custody continues into adulthood: 31% of women and 24% of men in the adult prison population report come from care. But according to the PRT, those figures could be an underestimate as many care leavers choose not to disclose their former looked-after status.

The number of under-18s in custody has fallen in the past few years. But that means those remaining are particularly troubled, with multiple and complex needs, says Lyon. “While the majority of children in care do not get into trouble with the law, it is vital we understand better why some do – and hear their views on ways to get out of it.”

Samuel now works for a charity that teaches children about the consequences of crime. By sharing her story, she hopes she might change things for others. “When you’re going through it, you think: ‘Is it always going to be like this?’ From a very early age I was showing a lot of signs of disruptive behaviour. And maybe, had it been addressed when I was showing certain signs, all of this could have been prevented.”

The Department for Education says it is committed to improving the lives of care leavers. A DfE spokeswoman says: “We have changed the law so all children in foster care can stay with their foster family until they are 21, tightened the rules to avoid young people leaving care before they are ready, and continued to fund programmes aimed at getting young people leaving care into apprenticeships,” she says.

The review team is calling for evidence from children and young people who have been in care and custody, their families and carers, as well as social workers, youth offending team managers, police and local authority leaders and others who work with children in care and children in trouble with the law. Submissions may be sent to: carereview@prisonreformtrust.org.uk