1,800,000 Opportunities Missed by Criminal Justice System
To mark our 25th Anniversary, we have launched new analysis showing the extent of the ‘revolving door’. The revolving door is not inevitable, and it is our goal to stop it by intervening at the critical stage of young adulthood.
Our definition of the revolving door is that it is:
Characterised by repeated criminal justice contact – from police and courts to prisons and probation – for low level offences
Driven by multiple problems including mental ill health, problematic substance use, domestic violence and abuse, and homelessness.
Over the past five years we have spoken to 2,500 people with lived experience of the revolving door. Their accounts paint a stark picture of the combined impact of trauma and poverty in their lives. And they echo the evidence.
The evidence shows that 60,000 cautions or convictions for minor offences were given last year to people who had offended 11 or more times before. The criminal justice system had missed 1,800,000 previous opportunities to take these people out of the revolving door. Young adulthood is the point at which people can enter the revolving door and is where the criminal justice system embeds existing disadvantage.
Individually and in combination, poverty, adverse childhood experiences and community violence are all critical – but they are not deterministic. Resilience makes a difference, and it can be built at different levels. This is our challenge.
