AYJ Comment: Crime and Policing Bill must get to grips with youth custody crisis
Yet another deeply concerning inspection report on conditions in a children’s prison published this week demonstrates the urgent need for youth custody reform. The government’s newly announced Crime and Policing Bill is a crucial opportunity to keep children out of the failing secure estate.
This Tuesday 16th July HM Inspectorate of Prisons published its inspection report on Feltham A Young Offender Institution (YOI). Its shocking findings show significantly deteriorated conditions including rising self-harm, ‘very high’ levels of violence, prolonged segregation, and poor access to education. Incidents of disorder had tripled since the last inspection, use of force had increased a huge 68%, and two children had been kept separated from peers for more than 100 days. This is the latest in a series of concerning inspection reports painting a picture of YOIs in dire condition, characterised by incredibly volatile establishments and failing regimes.
A day after the inspection report’s publication, the new government announced its legislative agenda in the King's Speech, introducing several bills with implications for the youth justice system.
A Children's Wellbeing Bill aims to keep children safe by strengthening multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements; support low-income families; and improve the education system. A Mental Health Bill seeks to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983, and a Skills England Bill aims to improve training opportunities. Some of these measures have welcome potential to keep children out of the justice system by supporting children to thrive and addressing root causes of offending behaviour. A Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill is also announced but currently focuses on equal pay: we hope it is used as an opportunity to address racial injustice in the youth justice system.
Critically, a Crime and Policing Bill contains several measures aimed at reducing serious violence and improving policing. Key measures impacting children include:
rebuilding neighbourhood policing and improving policing standards
a new duty for local partners to co-operate to tackle anti social behaviour, and fast-tracked Public Space Protection Orders
a new offence of assaulting a shopworker
strengthening the law to tackle those who criminally exploit children
creating arrangements for local Young Futures prevention partnerships to ‘bring together services to support at-risk teenagers’.
The impact of these measures will vary, with some potentially protecting and providing much needed support to children at risk of contact with the youth justice system, but others potentially widening the net of the criminal justice system and leading to further punitive interventions. We will carefully consider each with our members as details come to light. We have also been working with members to develop a number of proposals for reform across our priorities for youth justice, some of which we would want to see in a Crime and Policing Bill, and we will explore these further as the bill progresses.
Key within our priorities is the need to end the suffering of children in the secure estate, and the Feltham YOI inspection report reinforces this once again. The Crime and Policing Bill must be used as an opportunity for custodial sentencing reform. Prison is no place for a child, yet children continue to be sent into an estate lurching from crisis to crisis. The UK is consistently found to be in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requirement that a custodial sentence must be a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.
A new legislative framework is required to ensure that custody is only available for the most serious crimes, where the child poses a serious and continuing risk to the public, and where there is genuinely no way of managing that risk in the community.
AYJ worked with an expert group of our members to develop a legislative proposal for what ‘custody as a last resort’ would look like in law. We urge the new youth justice minister to include it in the Crime and Sentencing Bill. Alongside this, as the minister takes up their role, they must urgently develop plans for closing YOIs and the last remaining Secure Training Centre once and for all, scaling up Secure Children’s Homes capacity, which provide the most appropriate environment currently available.
While we await confirmation of the youth justice ministerial appointment, we continue to work with our members to ensure we can support the new government to keep children safe, promote racial justice, and ensure the use of custody is a last resort. We look forward to working together for children once they are in post.