Citation

Ball C, Connolly J. Br. J. Criminol. 2000; 40(4): 594-616.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/bjc/40.4.594

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Links between educational disaffection and delinquency are well established; in contrast, courts' and agencies' responses to school absenteeism amongst defendants have received little research attention. In this article, the authors use data from a study of school-aged defendants who were truanting or excluded at the time of sentence to examine critically the provision of pre-sentence school-based information to courts and the extent to which supervision by the youth justice agencies made any impact on the educational situation of, or subsequent offending by, defendants. They suggest a tentative taxonomy and conclude that a new approach to multi-agency working will be necessary if Youth Offending Teams and panels set up under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 are effectively to address the problem of educationally disaffected offenders.