We have joined children’s rights and justice charities in calling for the closure of child prisons as a new review finds that child imprisonment is beyond reform.
The review – entitled ‘Why child imprisonment is beyond reform: A review of the evidence’ – aims to help the new government pursue evidence-based policy and avoid the pitfalls of the past. Published today, the review traces government pledges to reform child prisons over the last 25 years and analyses their impact based on the evidence in official reports. It concludes that all these pledges have ultimately failed and sets out urgent recommendations to facilitate the end of child imprisonment once and for all.
Four experts in the field of youth justice contributed to the review, which we supported together with seven charities:
- Alliance for Youth Justice
- Article 39
- Child Rights International Network
- Howard League for Penal Reform
- INQUEST
- Just for Kids Law
- National Association for Youth Justice
The review draws on a wide range of authoritative official sources to examine 10 pledges, including: children will be kept safe; solitary confinement will not be used for children; children will receive at least 30 hours of education a week; and restraint will only be used as a last resort. Across all 10 pledges, the evidence presented by the review has shown that ‘the multitudinous attempts to reform child imprisonment have ultimately failed.’
Amid the wider prisons crisis, the review calls on the new government to heed the evidence and sets out five recommendations to end child imprisonment:
- Affirm the removal of children from the prison estate, and the closure of child prisons – following the findings of previous reviews, and the last government’s acknowledgement that child prisons cannot be made safe or suitable for children.
- Establish a wide-ranging independent review of the circumstances in which children may be deprived of their liberty – through criminal justice, health and social care routes – as a means of making it a genuine measure of last resort, for the shortest period of time, and consistent with established national and international childcare standards and knowledge.
- Publish a national strategy with a timetable for the expedited closure of child prisons which focuses on supporting children and their families within their own communities and using only childcare establishments when deprivation of liberty is demonstrably the only possible means of avoiding serious and immediate harm to the child and/or others.
- Use the forthcoming Crime and Policing Bill to introduce statutory provisions that restrict the criminal courts’ use of deprivation of liberty for children.
- Transfer ministerial and civil service responsibility for children deprived of their liberty through the criminal courts from the Ministry of Justice to the Department for Education. Completely move the Youth Custody Service out of HM Prisons and Probation Service, integrating it within teams responsible for secure children’s homes and other relevant children’s social care policy within the Department for Education.
Speaking today, our Research Director, Roger Grimshaw, said:
Youth prisons have been a blight on the criminal justice system for too long. Children deserve better and I commend this insightful report.
The full review can be downloaded from the Article 39 website.
