Bereavement among young people in the justice system

Young people in custody have very often had someone close to them die, and in some studies far more of them have had a parent die than in the general population. In one Scottish young offenders institution, 30 of 33 young men surveyed had been bereaved, most of them several times over^[1]. The evidence is small and patchy, but it points one way: grief in this group is common, often unsupported, and easy to overlook.

Most children whose parent dies never come into contact with the police or the courts. But among the young people who do, bereavement is a recurring part of the story, sitting alongside other losses, family upheaval and trauma. A young person may be grieving a parent, a grandparent who raised them or a friend while held far from home. This study brings together what research from Scotland, England, the United States, Canada and Sweden shows about bereavement among young people in the justice system. It treats bereavement as a support need that services can meet, never as an explanation for offending or an excuse.

In the custody studies we found, most young people had been bereaved

The clearest figures come from small studies in Scotland. Nina Vaswani, at the University of Strathclyde’s Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice, surveyed young men serving sentences in a young offenders institution. Of the 33 who took part, 30 had experienced a bereavement (91%), and only two of the young men with a full mental health screen had not been bereaved^[1]. Those 30 young men had experienced 162 bereavements between them, a mean of 5.4 each, ranging from one to 18. More than three-quarters had experienced at least one traumatic bereavement, and two-thirds had experienced four or more deaths^[1].

A later summary of the same Scottish work adds that more than half (57%) had their first bereavement before the age of 11^[3]. In other words, for most of these young men, grief came long before custody.

In the United States, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network looked at 658 adolescents aged 13–18 with recent involvement in the juvenile justice system, whether detained, under community supervision by the court, or both^[2]. Loss and bereavement was the most frequently reported trauma type, at 61.2%, ahead of an impaired caregiver (51.7%) and domestic violence (51.6%). Traumatic loss or bereavement on its own was reported by 58.6% of boys and 64.9% of girls^[2]. These were young people already referred to trauma services, so they are not typical of all justice-involved youth.

A second US study of 107 adolescents with early-onset, persistent offending found that exposure to death was common, and 33.8% had clinically significant bereavement-related distress^[4].

A parent’s death stands out more than bereavement in general

Bereavement of some kind is common in all teenagers, so a high overall figure in custody does not, on its own, tell us much. Vaswani’s 2014 paper notes that studies of UK schoolchildren find that between 43% and 78% have had a family member or friend die, and that parental death is consistently found in about 3–5% of the general adolescent population^[1]. What seems to set young people in the justice system apart is not how often someone close has died, but who.

An earlier Glasgow study shows this most directly. In 2008, Vaswani looked at all 252 of Glasgow’s persistent young offenders for 2005/06, using social workers’ returns (167 responses, 66%) and case records^[5]. Where the answer was known, 59% had been bereaved, a share the report judged “similar to the rate in the general population”. But the death of a parent was recorded for 17% of all the persistent offenders, “far higher than the 3% to 4% seen in studies of the general adolescent population”^[5]. Among the young people known to be bereaved, a grandparent had died for 44 (42%) and a parent for 43 (41%).

The same report summarises a small study of young men aged 17 to 21 held at HM Prison Cardiff, in Wales: of 15 chosen because they had all been bereaved, 40% had had a parent die^[5]. In England and Wales, a Prison Reform Trust profile of children in custody found what the Chief Medical Officer for England’s 2012 annual report summarised as “one in eight children and young people in custody have experienced the death of a parent or sibling”^[6].

The size of the gap varies. In the 2014 Scottish survey, 7 of the 30 bereaved young men (about one in five of the 33 surveyed) had had a parent or main carer die^[1]. In a Barnardo’s Scotland service for women in prison at HMP & YOI Polmont (a women’s prison sample, not specifically young people), 57% had experienced the death of a parent or sibling^[3]. These samples are small and measured in different ways, so the figures should not be compared directly or read as a trend.

Many of the deaths were sudden, violent or linked to drugs and alcohol

The deaths these young people had experienced were often not the expected deaths of older relatives. In the Glasgow study, 144 deaths were recorded across the sample, and 25 young people had been bereaved more than once: almost one in four of those bereaved^[5]. Over half (56%) had their first recorded bereavement between the ages of 12 and 16, and a further 32% between 5 and 11.

The cause of death was not recorded for more than a third of these deaths. Where it was, illness accounted for 37%, but drug- or alcohol-related deaths made up 31% and murder 16%^[5]. Among parents, the pattern was sharper still: of 33 recorded causes of a parent’s death, 18 (55%) were related to drug or alcohol use^[5].

The 2014 Scottish survey found the same weight of sudden and violent loss: 23 of the 30 bereaved young men had experienced at least one traumatic bereavement^[1]. In interviews, some described how grief was complicated where a death was a homicide, because “the young men often knew the perpetrator of the crime”^[1]. A comparative study of 190 incarcerated young men in Scotland and Canada found that 77% of the Scottish and 84% of the Canadian participants reported witnessing violence^[7].

Deaths linked to drugs, alcohol or violence can carry stigma and involve police and courts, which can make support harder to offer and accept. Our studies on children bereaved by drug and alcohol deaths and children bereaved by homicide look at these circumstances in more detail.

An association, not an explanation

None of these studies shows that a parent’s death leads a young person into offending. Most are small, drawn from one institution or city, and have no comparison group. Bereavement in these samples sits alongside poverty, time in care, domestic violence, family drug and alcohol use and school exclusion, and the same circumstances that make an early parental death more likely can also make contact with the justice system more likely. The Chief Medical Officer’s report for England listed bereavement as one of “a range of other challenges, such as exclusion from school, homelessness, bereavement, trauma and being in care” that children in the youth justice system are more likely to have experienced^[6].

The strongest population evidence comes from Sweden. Wilcox and colleagues linked national registers from 1969 to 2004, comparing more than 500,000 people whose parent had died (in their childhood, adolescence or young adulthood) with 3,807,867 whose parents were alive^[8]. They found that “all offspring who experienced parental death, regardless of mode or age, were at increased risk for violent criminal convictions”^[8]. That is a raised risk across a whole population, not a prediction about any child. The great majority of bereaved children in Sweden, as elsewhere, are never convicted of anything, and register studies can adjust for some family circumstances but not all.

The honest reading is that bereavement, and especially a parent’s death, is unusually common among young people in custody, often comes with other adversity, and is rarely recognised. That is a support need. It is not a reason to see bereaved children as a risk.

Custody interrupts grief, and support rarely arrives at the right time

The Glasgow study asked social workers what bereavement support had been offered. For more than half of the 105 bereaved young people (51%), nobody knew, often because the death had happened before the young person was known to social work^[5]. Support had been offered and declined for 30 (29%), not offered at all for 15 (14%), and offered and taken up by just 6 (6%). The report noted that the timing of an offer of support is key, because the need for it may only surface weeks, months or years later.

Where social workers recorded the main impact of a bereavement, the commonest was emotional (24%): grief, guilt, sorrow and difficulty coming to terms with the death. Behavioural changes, such as substance use, missing school or offending, were recorded for 20%, and practical problems such as becoming accommodated for 8%^[5].

Custody itself shapes grief. In the 2014 interviews, one of the young men’s main worries “was that something would happen to someone they loved while they were in prison”, and when a death did happen, “the realities of prison life interrupted all aspects of the grieving process”^[1]. The Scotland–Canada study found that many young men “seemed to adhere to a prison masculinity that may constrain help-seeking behavior”^[7]. Yet custody can also be a chance to reach grief that has been carried for years: Vaswani notes earlier evidence that “male prisoners have been found to be more likely to access Cruse bereavement counselling while in prison than when in the community”^[1], and some young men said it was only once they were stable in custody that they could begin to face their losses.

There is early evidence that grief-focused help can work in these settings. In a US secure facility, 63 male adolescents took part in a grief-focused group programme between 2015 and 2020. Their grief scores for separation distress fell, and there was a 50% reduction in behavioural incident reports, while 63 matched young people who did not take part showed no change^[9]. The authors describe this as preliminary evidence from a single site, and note that few studies have tested grief-focused treatment with incarcerated adolescents.

What the evidence asks of us

The research base is thin, but the researchers who built it draw consistent conclusions, and they point to things youth justice services, prisons and the bereavement sector can do.

• Ask about bereavement routinely. Vaswani’s 2014 study concluded that “prisons should routinely screen for bereavements and any negative impacts on entry in to prison and throughout the duration of stay”^[1]. In the Glasgow study, whether support had been offered was unknown for more than half of bereaved young people^[5]. Recording who has died, when and how is a basic first step.
• Offer support more than once. Only 6 of 105 bereaved young people in Glasgow took up support when it was offered^[5]. An offer that stays open, and is repeated once a young person is settled, fits what the interviews describe.
• Reach children earlier, in the community. Most of the young men in the Scottish work were first bereaved before 11^[3]. Vaswani’s research “highlights the importance of providing a range of bereavement provision in childhood and in the community before problems escalate”^[1]. That points to schools, social work and children’s bereavement services, especially for children bereaved by drug, alcohol or violent deaths. Our study on who gets bereavement support looks at access more broadly.
• Train and support the staff. When HMP & YOI Polmont in Scotland trained its whole staff group on trauma, bereavement and loss (208 staff were surveyed before and after), almost all (96%) said they would recommend the training to colleagues, and staff asked for continued support to put it into practice^[3].
• Make it possible to grieve in custody. Fear of a death while inside, and of missing the chance to say goodbye, came through in interviews^[1]. How news of a death is given, family contact and funerals are part of bereavement support here.
• Fund better evidence. We found no country that routinely publishes how many children in its youth justice system have had a parent die. Larger studies with comparison groups, beyond Scotland and the United States, would show how big the need is and what helps.

For the wider picture of how many children are bereaved of a parent, and what is and isn’t counted, see the bereaved children research library.

Language: this piece uses plain words such as “died” rather than euphemisms, because they are clearer. It describes young people by their circumstances rather than by labels, except where a study’s own category (such as “persistent offenders”) is needed to say who was counted.

Why we're publishing this

Young people in the justice system are rarely thought of as bereaved children, yet the studies here suggest many of them are. Their grief can be hidden behind other labels. We have gathered the evidence in one place so that childhood bereavement charities, youth justice teams and the people commissioning services can make the case for support with figures they can check. The case belongs to these young people and to the organisations already working alongside them.

How to read this data

Almost all the evidence here comes from small studies: a survey of 33 young men in one Scottish institution, social work records for 252 young people in one city, and clinical samples in the United States. Small samples give wide uncertainty, and none of these studies compares bereaved young people in custody with similar young people outside it. The Glasgow figures rely on what social workers knew and recorded, so they probably undercount; the US figures come from young people already referred to trauma services, so they may overstate how common loss is among all justice-involved youth. The “one in eight” figure is the Chief Medical Officer’s summary of a Prison Reform Trust profile of 300 children who entered custody in England and Wales between July and December 2008, 23 of whom (12%) were known from case records to have had a parent or sibling die^[10]; it combines the death of a parent with the death of a sibling, and relies on what was recorded. The general-population comparison of 3–5% for parental death comes from UK school surveys cited by the authors, not from official statistics.

The Swedish register study is the only population-wide evidence here. It measures violent criminal convictions, not custody, and we could see only its abstract, which does not set out which family circumstances were taken into account. It shows a raised risk across a population; it says nothing about any individual child. Figures from different countries, years and definitions should not be compared directly or read as a trend. We found no comparable published figures for Australia, New Zealand, Ireland or other countries.

Use this data

Free to cite with attribution to Understanding Bereavement. Charities, schools, services and journalists are welcome to reuse these figures and charts. For the underlying figures as a spreadsheet, get in touch.

Important: This study summarises published research about groups of people for general information. It is not medical advice or bereavement support, and it cannot describe or predict anything about an individual child or family. If you are worried about a child or about yourself, please speak to a GP or another qualified professional.

Sources

1. Vaswani N. The ripples of death: exploring the bereavement experiences and mental health of young men in custody. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2014; 53(4). Author accepted manuscript. strathprints.strath.ac.uk/81623
2. Dierkhising CB, Ko SJ, Woods-Jaeger B, et al. Trauma histories among justice-involved youth: findings from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2013. europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC3714673
3. Vaswani N, Paul S, Gillon F, et al. Trauma, bereavement and loss: key learning and messages from research and practice. Centre for Youth & Criminal Justice, Barnardo’s Scotland and University of Strathclyde, 2019. strathprints.strath.ac.uk/69520
4. Lansing AE, Plante WY, Beck AN, Ellenberg M. Loss and grief among persistently delinquent youth: the contribution of adversity indicators and psychopathy-spectrum traits to broadband internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 2018. europepmc.org/article/MED/30344839
5. Vaswani N. Persistent offender profile: focus on bereavement. CJSW Briefing Paper 13. Glasgow City Council / Criminal Justice Social Work Development Centre for Scotland, 2008. cycj.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Bereavement-Paper-CJSW-Briefing.pdf
6. Lennox C, Khan L. Chapter 12: Youth justice. In: Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer 2012, Our Children Deserve Better: Prevention Pays. Department of Health (England), 2013. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/…/33571_2901304_CMO_Chapter_12.pdf
7. Cesaroni C, Maycock M, Vaswani N. Incarcerated young men, masculinity, and trauma. Men and Masculinities, 2023. europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC10323979
8. Wilcox HC, Kuramoto SJ, Lichtenstein P, et al. Psychiatric morbidity, violent crime, and suicide among children and adolescents exposed to parental death. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2010. europepmc.org/article/MED/20431471
9. Clow S, Olafson E, Ford J, et al. Addressing grief reactions among incarcerated adolescents and young adults using trauma and grief component therapy. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 2023. europepmc.org/article/MED/36174159
10. Jacobson J, Bhardwa B, Gyateng T, Hunter G, Hough M. Punishing Disadvantage: a profile of children in custody. Prison Reform Trust, 2010. prisonreformtrust.org.uk/…/PunishingDisadvantage.pdf