Institutional prejudice or discrimination refers to organisational policies or practices that result in the systematic denial of resources and opportunities or services to members of subordinate groups. This form of discrimination is maintained by the rules, organisational guidelines, or traditions of an institution.

An example of this would be the Rotherham child exploitation cases. The girls were labelled as having a particular lifestyle; failing to identify the real issues and failing to protect them from trafficking and exploitation.

Whenever we label people, we by definition we generalise about them, however we also dehumanise them and put the blame for their circumstances onto then (i.e. the victims). Whenever we label a young person as “troubled” of “troublesome”, our view of them will be distorted by the label and we run the risk of responding to a stereotype, rather than treating them as individuals.