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Youth justice in the UK: children, young people and crime
Youth justice in the UK: children, young people and crime

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

Youth justice in the UK: children, young people and crime

Introduction and guidance

This free badged course, Youth justice in the UK: children, young people and crime, lasts 24 hours and is comprised of eight sessions. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete a further study session. The eight sessions are linked to ensure a logical flow through the course. They are:

  1. Children or criminals?
  2. Youth justice in England and Wales
  3. Children’s Hearings in Scotland
  4. Restorative conferencing in Northern Ireland
  5. It’s different for girls?
  6. Race, ethnicity and youth justice
  7. It’s all about class
  8. Youth justice with integrity

Each session should take you around 3 hours. There are a number of activities throughout the course where you are asked to note down your response. A text box is provided for you to do this, however if you would prefer to record your answers in another way that is fine.

At the end of each session there is also a quiz to help you check your understanding. And, if you want to receive a formal statement of participation, at the end of Sessions 4 and 8 there is a quiz which you need to pass.

After completing this course, you should be able to:

  • describe the youth justice systems operating in the UK
  • appreciate the significance of different approaches to children’s offending behaviour within the UK
  • understand more about children’s experiences of victimisation and crime
  • appreciate there are many ways of reducing the harms some children can cause
  • appreciate how differences around gender, race, ethnicity and social class operate in youth justice.

Moving around the course

In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each session, you will find a link to the next session. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course.

It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.