‘Is MAPPA for kids?’ (Whitty, this volume). Why, when Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) are now an established and seemingly accepted part of the criminal justice system, does this question need to be asked? In fact, why devote a book to a rather specialist area of practice that only directly affects a small number of young people? Because, as the contributors to this volume have shown, debates about MAPPA require, and can also be a catalyst for, consideration of a range of significant theoretical and practical issues, including concepts of risk; the role of children's rights; professional decision making; organisational culture; partnership working; and offender rehabilitation, to name just some. To conclude, therefore, this chapter brings together key themes, highlights gaps in our current knowledge and puts forward suggestions for the future development and application of MAPPA to young people.

Key issues

Notwithstanding the historical accounts of the development of MAPPA (Bryan and Doyle, 2003) and various research studies that have looked at the practical workings of these arrangements (Maguire et al, 2001; Kemshall et al, 2005), it remains unclear as to whether incorporating young people within MAPPA was a deliberate choice as part of the government's pursuit of the public protection agenda or whether it was an example of policy drift (Whitty, this volume). If the former, then there are questions as to why it was thought appropriate to include young people into a system designed initially for adult sex offenders and if the latter, then it is surely problematic if this happened almost accidentally.

Either way, the fact that the reforms in youth justice and the development of MAPPA occurred over the same time period, but essentially separately from each other, helps to explain why the inclusion of young people within MAPPA is sometimes difficult. Research shows a somewhat patchy picture with regard to the operation of MAPPA in youth justice due to a considerable degree of variation in the extent, quality and type of interaction between Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) and MAPPA (Sutherland and Jones, 2008). The current estimate of 2,000 young people subject to MAPPA in England and Wales is an approximation and more reliable data are needed. This should include breakdowns by age, gender, ethnicity and offence type so that we have a better understanding of which young people are being drawn into this particular aspect of contemporary risk penality.