This blog was written by Prof Umar Toseeb and Dr. Megan Frith.
Children and young people with special educational needs (SENs) are more likely to commit violent offences compared to those without SENs. Our research team used existing data from school and police records from over 1.5 million children and young people to unpack this relationship. The aim of our project was to identify what works to reduce violent offending and re-offending in children and young people with SENs.
SEN and Youth Offending: The Evidence
Eighty-seven percent of all violent youth offences recorded by the police in England are committed by those with an identified SEN (DfE, 2022). Violent offences are criminal acts involving harm against another person (e.g. assault, robbery using threat or force, homicide). Children and young people who have been identified by a professional (e.g., educational psychologist, speech and language therapist etc.) as having a SEN that impacts upon their learning and engagement in school form the majority of recorded violent crimes committed by 10 – 17-year-olds in England. These SENs include autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, dyscalculia, speech, language, and communication needs, etc. The increased likelihood of violence offences for young people with SENs, recorded by the police, is hugely concerning for children and young people with SENs, but also for society as a whole.
It can be tempting to think of violent offending as deviant behaviour driven by individual choice that requires punishment. The reality, in our opinion, is that violent behaviour in most children and young people with SENs is likely a result of systems and societal structures that do not accommodate for their diverse needs. Such a social model of behaviour shifts the burden of responsibility away from the individual towards a responsibility shared by society. It is our collective duty to build a society that is inclusive and accommodates a diverse range of human functioning
SEN and Youth Offending
Our research team received funding from the Youth Endowment Fund to identify systems and processes in the education and criminal justice system that might be contributing to or exacerbating the high rates of recorded violent offending by children and young people with SENs. The project is ongoing, and we are hoping to publish the findings in the coming months.
Violent behaviour in children and young people with SENs is likely a result of systems and societal structures that do not accommodate for their diverse needs.
SEN in the Education System
In the education system, we were interested in the following five domains:
SEN identification. Evidence shows that there is an inequality in who is identified as having a SEN and subsequently given support; there is effectively a postcode lottery (Hutchinson, 2021). Therefore, we compared violent offending for youth with an identified SEN with those with an unidentified SEN (i.e., those with similar profiles but without an SEN label). It may be that identification of SENs (and assumed subsequent support) reduces violent offending in youth with SENs.
Timing of SEN identification. International evidence suggests early identification of SENs reduces offending (Cronin & Addo, 2021); however, there is no equivalent good-quality evidence in England. Therefore, we compared youth with similar types of SENs who are identified earlier vs later to determine the impact of early identification on violent offending.
Consistency of SEN label. A key transition point for many children is the move from primary to secondary school. Some children lose their SEN label when they move from one school to another. That is, the new school is not aware that they have an SEN. This often results in the loss of the specialist SEN support that they require. We compared youth who retained their SEN label during the transition from primary to secondary school with those who lost their label.
Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCPs). Children with SENs in England whose needs cannot be met by existing provision are granted legal safeguards detailed in an EHCP. Access to EHCPs is also likely to be unequal. We compared violent offending for children and young people with EHCPs to those without EHCPs with similar profiles to determine whether legally binding SEN support is likely to reduce subsequent violent offending.
Type of school provision. The type of school a young person attends (e.g., mainstream school, special school, etc.) might mean different levels of SEN support. It might also be indicative of the young person’s needs; those with more severe needs might be less likely to attend mainstream provision. We compared youth with SENs in different types of school provision to determine whether school provision has an impact on whether youth with SENs become involved in violent offending.
Education and criminal justice system processes are likely to hold the answer.
SEN and the Criminal Justice System
In the criminal justice system, we were interested in the following:
Cautions. A caution is a formal warning given to someone who has admitted to committing an offence. It does not count as a criminal conviction, and therefore, the negative impacts on future education and employment are likely to be minimal. We compared whether children and young people with SENs are more or less likely to be given a caution for their first violent offence compared to those without SENs. We were also interested in whether the use of cautions led to a reduction in re-offending in children and young people with SENs.
Custodial sentences. A custodial sentence usually means a young person with SENs being sent to a youth offending institution. They will likely be taken out of their school, home, and their social support mechanisms disrupted. An alternative is community sentences, which allow the young person can continue to attend their school, stay home, and maintain their social relationships. We tested whether children and young people with SENs were more or less likely to be given a custodial sentence for their first violent offence.
Going Forward
We are hoping to finalise our analyses in the coming months and publish a report of the findings; it is currently over 100 pages, and we are still writing it! It will be available on the Youth Endowment Fund website. We hope that our findings will inform conversations and debates about how to best support children and young people with SENs.
Beyond this project, there is lots of work to be done to understand how best to support children and young people with SENs. Most importantly, there needs to be a shift in how society views SENs. Labels such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder etc. have their origins in the medical model, which situates struggles within the young person. Whilst such labels can be perceived as helpful for some young people with lived experiences, they might convince young people that their problems are coming from within rather than from the societal systems and structures around them that give rise to suffering; this needs to change.
There needs to be a shift in how society views SENs.
NB This blog has been peer reviewed
Conflicts of Interest
The project is funded by the Youth Endowment Fund (grant reference DAT-YOR-140524).
References
Cronin P, Addo R. Interactions with youth justice and associated costs for young people with speech, language and communication needs. Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2021 Jul;56(4):797-811. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12628. Epub 2021 May 27. PMID: 34042241.
DfE. (2022). Education, children’s social care and offending: Descriptive statistics. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6227a9b58fa8f526dcf89e17/Education_children_s_social_care_and_offending_descriptive_stats_FINAL.pdf
DfE (2025) Special educational needs in England, https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/special-educational-needs-in-england/2024-25
Hutchinson, J. (2021). Identifying pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (Education Policy Institute, Issue. https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/identifying-send/
Biographies
This blog was written by Prof Umar Toseeb and Dr. Megan Frith.
Prof Umar Toseeb is a Professor of Psychology at the University of York. His research focuses on children and young people’s mental health and special educational needs. Umar has led a number of projects involving the secondary analysis of existing research and administrative data. He is currently leading a project focussing on how to better identify and support children and young people with SENs, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
Dr Megan Frith is a Research Associate at the University of York (https://www.york.ac.uk/education/our-staff/academic/megan-frith/). She has a PhD in child and adolescent mental health and is interested in all things related to children and young people’s development. Megan has extensive experience of analysing large datasets; she fitted all of the statistical models for this project.
