PUBLICATIONS

This briefing calls on the government to protect and promote a child centred children’s secure estate, with custody only ever a last resort. It also calls for developing a distinct approach to custody for young adults.

In response to the development of a Youth Custody Service (YCS) Youth Custody Strategy, this paper sets out AYJ positions on the essential elements of a strategic approach to the children’s secure estate.

This briefing urges the government to take bold action to reimagine youth justice. We set out changes new Ministers must prioritise to ensure a safeguarding response to vulnerable children, end racial injustice, and guarantee that custody is a last resort.

This second report from the Young Advocates Project presents findings from engagement with 90 children and young people across England and Wales, and focuses on the three priority topics of criminalisation, policing, and intervention and diversion. The aim was to explore the routes into the justice system for young people, as compared to pathways out and away from it.

This briefing, part of a project funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust, explores how racially minoritised young people experience particularly destabilising transitions to adulthood due to deficits in support before and after turning 18. It highlights the crucial role the ‘by and for’ voluntary and community sector plays in addressing these shortfalls.

The AYJ has responded to a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) consultation on youth remand funding arrangements. The response summarises discussions that took place in a meeting convened between expert AYJ members and the MoJ remand consultation team to feed in their views.

The AYJ has submitted evidence to a Justice Select Committee inquiry into the future prison population and estate capacity, in order to draw the Committee’s attention to how the Ministry of Justice's current strategy for managing the adult prison population is impacting children and young people in the children’s secure estate.

Over 30 organisations working with & on behalf of children and young adults in criminal justice system have called on Youth Justice Minister Damian Hinds to act over the appalling treatment of children in the secure estate.

This evidence review, part of a three-year project on transition into adulthood funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust, summarises the policy context and existing evidence on young people turning 18 in the criminal justice system.

The AYJ has responded to a consultation on a new Policy Framework and supporting guidance on safeguarding and child protection for secure settings in the Youth Custody Service.

The AYJ has responded to the Children’s Rights Alliance for England’s (CRAE) call for written evidence to inform the Civil Society Alternative Report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child 2022.

This briefing presents the significant challenges for the children’s secure estate that lie ahead in the wake of the pandemic. It examines existing failures pre-pandemic, the significant risk of harm to children in custody as a result of experiences during the pandemic, failures in strategy for the children’s secure estate, and the government projection that the number of children in custody will steeply rise in coming years.