PRCBC’s work continues to develop on challenging the good character requirement that applies to the registration of British citizenship for children and young people from the age of 10.
In April 2024, we ran a mini conference with specialist lawyers to re-examine and refine our strategic litigation concerning this character requirement. We have contributed to articles accepted for publication in peer-reviewed legal and psychiatric journals.
We have a settled working relationship with a forensic psychiatrist, highly experienced in the criminal justice system, and are exploring opportunities to work with preventative and rehabilitative youth working specialists. Challenging the character requirement is among the most complex and demanding work we have undertaken.
The many vulnerabilities of our clients and wider beneficiaries often include significant histories in the care, criminal justice and mental health systems in addition to poverty and family separation.
This work builds on recent years in which we have secured the registration of several young people as British citizens, some of whom with very serious offences during their teenage years. That has led the Home Office to amend its policy, loosening its previously formulaic approach of barring registration for a fixed period of years according to type and length of criminal sentence. Nonetheless, many children and young people are excluded from the citizenship of this country, where they have grown up and belong and in many cases were born. That exclusion results from an unjust requirement of character that none of their peers will ever have to satisfy to be recognised as British, which is applied with little if any recognition of vital considerations of children and young people’s developing maturity and the need to support and encourage their social integration.