Counting Troubles

Someone- maybe President Lyndon Johnson -famously said that the first rule of politics is to be able to count. This seems to have been lost on the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights who earlier this month published an important report on Youth detention: solitary confinement and restraint.

The report recommends that the use of pain inducing techniques and solitary confinement of children in detention should be banned because they cause physical distress and psychological harm in both the short and longer term and are clearly not compliant with human rights standards.  So far so good, but the report is far from clear about the children it considers to be in detention.   

The report’s summary opens with the claim that “Around 2,500 children are detained by the state in England and Wales at any one time.” When I saw it, I thought the figure looked far too high and have now had a chance to look into it.

The Committee reaches the 2,500 figures by adding together four basic types of institution where they say children are detained. They are broadly correct that 900 children are detained in the Youth Secure Estate in relation to criminal matters - Young Offender Institutions, Secure Training Centres and Secure Children’s Homes. But the Committee is wrong to say that all of these are “under custodial sentences for criminal convictions”. About a quarter are on remand.

The Committee is also right that around 100 children are detained in Secure Children’s Homes (SCHs) for welfare reasons (although its not clear that all of these are aged 10-14 as the Committee claims)

It’s the Committee’s figures on children with mental health issues and learning disabilities which look seriously awry. On mental health, the Committee reports that “around 1,200 children … are detained in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Tier 4 units, under the mental health legislation”.  The source for the 1200 number is given as NHS England, 2017–18 NHS Benchmarking CAMHS Data. This is not publicly available data but the official responsible for it has told me that she thinks there has been some mis-interpretation of it in the Committee’s report as “We did not report data on detentions of children under the Mental Health Act. We only collect data on CAMHS bed numbers and total admissions to these (most of which will be on a voluntary basis, i.e. not detained)”. 

The Committee also reports that around 250 autistic children and children with learning disabilities are detained in Assessment and Treatment Units (ATUs), CAMHS units or other inpatient units, under the mental capacity legislation or mental health legislation. This looks incorrect as well. It’s true that NHS data shows that at the end of October 2018 there were 250 inpatients under 18 with learning disabilities and/or autistic spectrum disorder receiving inpatient care commissioned by the NHS in England. But it is very unlikely that all of these were detained. The data shows that of the 2,350 inpatients of all ages in care at the end of October 2018, 1,140 (48%) were in a secure ward.

A census undertaken by NHS England of young people in secure settings on 14 September 2016 which was published last year reported that 1,322 English young people were  in secure units- 903 in the youth justice system, 107 for welfare reasons and 312 under the Mental Health Act.  There is no mention of any children with autism and learning difficulties.

Maybe I’m nitpicking and what look like counting errors or definitional muddles do not detract from the report’s main conclusions. The Committee may take the view that their recommendations should apply not only to detained children but with even greater force to other children accommodated by the state. But then they should say so in clear terms.

I always worry that if people get the basics wrong, they are likely to get other things wrong as well. If I am right, the Committee should publish an erratum about the figures and explain exactly what they understand by the term detention.