ABSTRACT
Here we interrogate the overrepresentation of children and young people with mental health disorders and/or cognitive/neuro-disabilities in youth justice systems. We conceptualise the disproportionate criminalisation of such young people by drawing on what we term critical disability criminology, a theoretical orientation that shifts the analytical focus from individualised constructions of impairment to the systemic disabling effects of youth justice assystemic injustices that derive from, and are compounded by, the interlocking and compounding nature of systemic injustice within and between different institutional processes; in particular, education, public care and youth justice. We then analyse the disproportionate criminalisation of children and young people with mental health disorders and/or cognitive/neuro-disabilities that derives from identifiable policing practices, court decisions and bail adjudications and custodial detention. Finally, we argue that the broader systems through which such children and young people are processed in Australia and in England and Wales are fundamentally broken.
