Dr Hope Kent

My research aims to evidence and change the way that people with disabilities are over-represented in our criminal justice system. I am interested in how people are marginalised across our education, health, and social care systems, and how this leads to criminal justice contact. My work examines public health approaches to crime and justice, and I am interested in how the social determinants of health translate as social determinants of criminalisation. 

I work mainly with large administrative datasets to draw population-level inferences about how people interact with systems.

I am currently a Research Fellow with ADR-UK, working on a project using the ECHILD data linkage of hospital and education data. I am tracking outcomes for children with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) in school (e.g. school exclusion, absences, and serious mental health difficulties). I am examining SEND provision for children with ABI, and what the impact of being identified as SEND is on trajectories through school.   

I have ongoing collaborations with Do-IT profiler,  St Helen's Youth Justice Service, Brainkind, and HMP Parc. I am also looking at electronic police custody record data to examine the impact of PACE safeguards for children in police custody. 

Research Keywords:

• Neurodevelopmental 
• Neurodisability
• Criminal Justice System
• School Exclusion
• Traumatic Brain Injury
• Social Models of Disability 

Research Group Webpage: 

https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/neurodisabilitycriminaljustice/