Directory of Research

All research and evidence on NICCO is reviewed using a Quality Assessment Tool (QAT) developed by the University of Huddersfield and Barnardo's.

Research and evidence is assessed in four key areas: Methodological Quality, Child-Centredness, Relevance to Policy and Strategy, and Relevance to Practice with offender's children. This ensures that items on the NICCO website are as useful as possible to academics, practitioners, commissioners and other professionals. For more information about the development of the QAT or to review research in order to list it on NICCO, please see the QAT webpage where you can download the Tool, Guidebook and a short step-by-step 'How To' document. Please contact us to submit quality assessed research on to NICCO.

Click on the icons to see a full list of items which have been awarded a standard icon or icon+ (for items which have scored particularly highly) in each key area:

This report is the output of a review carried out jointly by the Ministry of Justice (National Offender Management Service) and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (then Children, Young People and Families Directorate, DfES). The review involves experts, practitioners, families and policy makers. The report firstly notes that children of prisoners experience poorer outcomes and the numbers of this group are increasing. The field visits conclude that there is no shared, robust...
The Corston Report is a review of vulnerable women in the criminal justice system carried out in 2006 by Baroness Jean Corston. The review made 43 recommendations about the treatment of women in the criminal justice system, and argued "the need for a distinct radically different, visibly-led, strategic, proportionate, holistic, woman-centred, integrated approach". Whilst the report focuses more generally on vulnerable female offenders, it recognises that a large proportion of...
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This report, published under the previous administration, outlined the Government's commitment to "a coherent system to support offenders' children and families". It provided a framework for carrying out this work, detailing the key tasks to be undertaken and responsibilities to be assumed, at different points throughout a family's experience of the criminal justice system. These tasks and responsibilities are assigned to services and agencies such as Local...
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This report aims to inform UK policy making regarding preventing offending and reoffending, by bringing together published information and new findings on prisoners' children and families. It looks at the past and present family circumstances of 1,435 newly sentenced prisoners. It examines their childhood and family background, current family relationships, and associations between background/family characteristics and reoffending e.g. school truancy. The report estimates that 200,000...
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This is a report of the outcomes and recommendations of a number of projects run as part of a bid won from National Offender Management Service (NOMS) by the West Midlands. The pilot projects were run in prisons and later within wider communities across the area. The aim of the project was to provide evidence about the longer term impact of improved contact with children and families on rehabilitation, crime reduction and safer communities. The project also aimed to provide a partnership...
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This peer reviewed article investigates whether children of prisoners have more convictions as adults than their peers whose parents were not sentenced to prison but did incur convictions. This is examined using two longitudinal data sets: the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and the NSCR Transfive Study between 1946 until 1981 in England and the Netherlands. Findings show that there was no notable relationship discovered between the imprisonment of a parent and the offending...
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The Centre is delivered by Barnardo’s in partnership with Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS).
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