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Children with neurodevelopmental conditions - such as ADHD, autism or acquired brain injury - are overrepresented in youth justice systems worldwide. Through its ‘spiral model’, this book explains how failures to accommodate neurodiversity across education, health, social care and justice turn difference and unmet need into vulnerability to criminalisation and draw children ever deeper into systems of control.
Crucially, the book also maps how this spiral can be interrupted and reversed, calling for a fundamental transformation in how public services understand and respond to neurodivergent children - placing recognition, support and rights at the heart of a radically different approach.
Nathan Hughes is Professor of Adolescent Health and Justice at the University of Sheffield, and co-director of CIRCLE – the Centre for International Research on Care, Labour and Equalities.
Hope Kent is a Research Fellow in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham, and an Associate at the University of Exeter.
1. Introduction: Neurodisability, Children’s Rights and Youth Justice
2. Neurodisability, Neurodiversity and the Language of Youth Justice
3. Evidencing Over-Representation: Prevalence, Identification and Assessment in Youth Justice Systems
4. Introducing the Spiral Model of the Criminalisation of Neurodisability
5. Functional Vulnerability: Impairment, Context and the Conditions for Harm
6. Unmet Need, Institutional Response and Pathways to Criminalisation
7. Disabling Barriers to Access to Justice Experiences of Police and Court Processes
8. The Efficacy of Community and Custodial Interventions for Children With Neurodisability
9. From Recognition to Reform: Interrupting the Criminalisation of Neurodivergent Children