A fateful legacy of childhood: the deportation of non-citizen offenders from the UK

This article argues that individuals who arrive in the UK as children, or who are born in the UK to those arriving as migrants, should never be deported as a consequence of criminal offending, even as adults. When individuals arrive in the host country as children, they typically have no agency in such decisions and so did not choose to be put at the risk of deportation as a further consequence of offending, nor could they be expected to have done so. The risk of deportation was simply put on them by the actions of others and therefore they should not be subjected to an additional, discriminatory consequences for their offences. This article presents a maximalist and minimalist policy response. The maximalist response is to exclude all those who arrive in the UK as children from the legal power of deportation. The minimalist policy response is to exempt from deportation anyone who could have become a British citizen (and thus immune from deportation) but for the fact that they were a child at the earliest point at which they could have done so.