When the UK government plans its COVID-19 economic recovery, children and their rights must be at the heart of decision-making. All children have been deeply affected by the pandemic. The closure of schools and leisure facilities, the contraction of essential children's and youth services, and increased exposure to stress, poverty, hunger, abuse and domestic violence during lockdown will have significant and enduring consequences and entrench existing disadvantage and discrimination along socio-economic, racial and ethnic lines (see Struthers, Chapter 11). This is especially true for children in conflict with the law. The response to the pandemic has heightened the conditions that draw children into contact with the criminal justice system (CJS) and had a detrimental impact on those currently within it, again perpetuating existing disparities especially for care-experienced and BAME heritage children. These are not, however, new problems brought about by the pandemic or the impending economic crisis. Rather, they are the very predictable consequences of a long-standing failure to address both the causes and responses to childhood offending in a way that is holistic, caring and rights-respecting, and in ways that are good for children, society and the economy.

Drawing on lessons from the decade of austerity, this chapter argues that the COVID-19 recovery period should be founded on principles of genera-relational justice. A genera-relational approach to childhood offending recognizes both the pandemic's disproportionate impact on children and our unique obligations to them. The chapter concludes, optimistically, that recent policy shifts in youth justice – including the intersecting ‘child-first’, trauma-informed and public health approaches – offer more fertile ground for a just response to the impending economic crisis than existed in the post-2008 period. However, to ensure these are embedded and able to survive the vicissitudes of the economy or political mood, they must be accompanied by more robust accountability. There is a great deal happening in this area, so there is a lot of information to share.

Youth justice in the shadow of austerity

In the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, reforms by the in-coming coalition government brought positive results for children in or at risk of entering the CJS, including the conferral of ‘looked after’ status on all remanded children. But it was reform to the system of diversion, alongside changes to police crime recording practices, that was transformative, reversing years of penal expansion under New Labour.