End Child Imprisonment
A new (12 August 2024) review from a coalition of leading charities argues that the failure to provide a safe and constructive regime for children in prison is an endemic problem and can only be resolved by transferring the responsibility for children who have to be deprived of their liberty from the Ministry of Justice to the Department for Education.
“Why child imprisonment is beyond reform: A review of the evidence” has been produced by a coalition of well-known organisations: the Alliance for Youth Justice, Article 39, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Child Rights International Network, Howard League for Penal Reform, Inquest, Just for Kids Law and the National Association for Youth Justice.
It benchmarks MoJ policies on children should be looked after in custody with inspections and other data to show that reform has consistently failed.
Context
The establishment of a distinct secure estate for children has been government policy for nearly 25 years. This endeavour began with the transfer of commissioning and oversight of children’s custodial institutions to the Youth Justice Board (YJB) in 2000, and the coming into force of the prison service policy ‘Regimes for prisoners under 18 years old’ in summer 1999.
In September 2017, the Youth Custody Service in the Ministry of Justice was established “as a distinct part of HM Prison and Probation Service” and YJB’s responsibility for child prisons was duly moved across.
Over the past 25 years, the number of children in custody at any one time has decreased significantly – from 3,000 at its high point in the early 2000s to under 450today.
But the majority of children are still detained in institutions whose history, culture and practices originate and in many respects replicate the confinement and punishment of adults. Only 19% of children in custody today are living in secure childcare establishments; the remainder are in prisons. Moreover, despite successive promises of transformation, children in prison continue to experience significant harm and neglect.
There are currently five child prisons in England and Wales – four young offender institutions (YOI) for children aged 15 years and over (Feltham, Parc, Werrington & Wetherby), and one secure training centre (Oakhill STC) for children aged 12 to 17 years. Cookham Wood was recently “repurposed” to help cope with the adult prison capacity crisis.
The report focuses on 10 inter-related areas of policy and practice in relation to child imprisonment in England, the contributors trace a range of government pledges, reforms and key policy developments that have evolved from the implementation of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to the present time. The ten are:
- Children will be kept safe
- Children’s relationships with their loved ones will be supported
- Looked after children in custody will have their needs met, and their rights fulfilled
- Solitary confinement will not be used for children
- Restraint will only ever be used on children as a last resort. Pain-inducing techniques will be reserved for extremely grave incidents
- Children will have at least 30 hours of education and purposeful activity a week
- Meals will meet the needs of growing children, and mealtimes will be a social activity
- All staff will be properly vetted, trained and supported to enable them to carry out skilled work with children who have multiple needs
- Children will receive the help and support they need whilst in custody, so they can thrive once they return to the community
- YOIs and STCs will be permanently closed
The report examines each of these 10 policy pledges in turn and shows clearly (and sometimes shockingly) how far short the reality of child imprisonment is from official aspirations.
Manifesto
The report calls on the new government to acknowledge that child imprisonment in its current state is intransigently resistant to reform and makes five key recommendations “for urgent government action”. The five are:
- Make a pledge to close child prisons
- Undertake a review of “the circumstances in which children may be deprived of their liberty”.
- Publish a strategy with a timetable for closing child prisons and focuses on supporting children and their families within their own communities.
- Use the forthcoming Crime and Policing Bill to introduce legislation that restricts the courts’ use of deprivation for children.
- Transfer responsibility for children deprived of their liberty from the MoJ to the Department for Education.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the images in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
