Youth Vulnerability and the Mobilisation of Morality and Risk: Youth Justice Practitioners' Framings and Responses to Youth Sexting

Youth-produced sexual imagery, commonly referred to as ‘sexting’, is criminalised under legislation relating to indecent images of children. Interviews with youth offending team (YOT) practitioners demonstrate that their understanding and responses to youth sexting are rooted in assumptions about its harms and ‘inappropriateness’. Constructions of youth sexters as ‘vulnerable’ resulted in what this research terms ‘remote risks’, such as exploitation by adult strangers, being reconceptualised as the ‘most likely’ harm, justifying the perceived need for ‘preventative’ youth justice interventions in all cases, in the name of protection. The research advocates for the decriminalisation of youth consensual sexting (at the very least) to encourage responses outside of the criminal justice system that centralise issues of privacy and consent, beyond notions of criminality.