Today CCJS joined fellow members of the End Child Imprisonment (ECI) campaign to call on the government not to forget children in its plans to tackle the prison capacity crisis.
Over the last two decades, the number of children in custody has decreased from about 3,000 down to just about 400. This summer, the Starmer Labour government set out its intentions to build on that reduction and transform youth custody by moving away from large custodial institutions towards a smaller, more child-centred setting.
In a statement published today, the ECI campaign has called on the current government to use this prison capacity crisis as an opportunity to bring forward the long-standing commitment to move away from child imprisonment.
This is a moment to take ambitious, urgent action and ECI outlines three actions for the government to consider:
- Deliver the promise to close prisons for children.
- Bring forward legislation on an expedited basis to ensure that children are spending shorter periods of time in detention than adults (which previous legislation did not ensure).
- Be ambitious in tackling the overuse of remand for children.
The full statement can be found here.
