This targeted literature review provides the context for a Nuffield Foundation funded project that seeks to explore how to disrupt the routes between care and custody for girls and women. Whilst many children in care do very well and do not come into conflict with the law, the over-representation of care experienced individuals in criminal justice settings is a persistent problem. There is increasing recognition that this is explicable in part by the fact that they may be subject to unnecessary criminalisation. There has been a surge of interest in this issue recently in England and Wales, and internationally, but this has not been consistently applied to all individuals with care experience. In particular, there has been a lack of focus on the experiences of girls and women. The interplay between gender and ethnicity has also been neglected.
