Incarcerated Young People, Education and Social Justice (eBook)

This book foregrounds the provision of education for young people who have been remanded or sentenced into custody. Both international conventions and national legislation and guidelines in many countries point to the right of children and young people to access education while they are incarcerated. Moreover, education is often seen as an important protective and 'rehabilitative' factor. However, the conditions associated with incarceration generate particular challenges for enabling participation in education. Bridging the fields of education and youth justice, this book offers a social justice analysis through the lens of 'participatory parity', the book brings together rare interviews with staff and young people in youth justice settings in Australia, secondary data from these sites, a suite of pertinent and frank reports, and international scholarship. Drawing on this rich set of material, the book demonstrates not only the challenges but also the possibilities for education as a conduit for social justice in custodial youth justice. The book will be of immediate relevance to governments and youth justice staff for meaningfully meeting their obligation of enabling children and young people in custody to benefit from education; and of interest to scholars and researchers in education, youth work and criminology. 

Kitty te Riele is Professor and Deputy Director (Research) in the Peter Underwood Centre at the University of Tasmania, on lutruwita (Tasmania) land, Australia. Her main research focus is educational policy and practice for marginalised young people, including in youth justice and in alternative education settings.

Tim Corcoran is Associate Professor in Inclusive Education at the School of Education, Deakin University, Australia. His main fields of research are inclusive education and educational psychology. This work challenges ableism in local, national, and international education policy and practice supporting psychosocial ways of knowing/being. 

Fiona MacDonald is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities at Victoria University, Australia. Her research focus is on inclusive education and social justice and investigates how children and young people negotiate a sense of belonging and identity in their local, everyday lives. 

Alison Baker is Associate Professor in Youth and Community Studies in the College of Arts and Education at Victoria University, Australia, on the land of the Wurundjeri of the Kulin nation. Her research focuses on the how inequality impacts young people from marginalised backgrounds, specifically on social identities, sense of belonging and the development of voice and activism.

Julie White is Honorary Professor in the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities, at Victoria University, Australia. Her major research interest is inclusive education, with a current focus on the education of young people in youth custody.