A Year in Youth Justice

 

Ironically, a year which saw children in custody spend huge amounts of time locked up in their cells, opened with the Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke recommending an entirely new approach to the use and practice of separation - situations in Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) where children are unable to mix with their peers or attend activities in the normal way.

Within weeks, Coronavirus effectively subjected almost all children in custody to a form of system wide separation. In May, Clarke praised the swift actions taken to keep children safe from the virus, and the creativity of staff and managers in providing opportunities for children to receive meaningful interaction. By July, he was more critical of disproportionate and avoidable restrictions which had seen most locked up for more than 22 hours for almost 4 months.

Clarke contrasted the suspension of face to face education in the YOIs run by the Youth Custody Service with its continuation through the pandemic in privately run and local authority secure establishments, but October’s inspection of Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre (STC) calls this judgment into question. It found that “children received education work packs to complete in their residential units during most of the Covid-19 restrictions as all education classes were suspended”. Two months later, lack of improvement to a spartan regime prompted a formal demand for urgent remedial action by the Justice Secretary.

In the final annual report of his tenure, Clarke rightly described childrens custody as "a systemic failure" producing "appalling" outcomes for many children. Charlie Taylor, who was to take over from Clarke in November, produced a further scathing assessment in his review of physical restraint, reporting that some staff appear to avoid spending all the time they can with children, have little understanding of why children behave as they do and what adults can do to help,  using force to maintain their position at the top of a hierarchy of violence. As a result of his report, the use of pain inducing techniques is set to be removed from the system of behaviour management in YOIs and STCs by the end of the year.

Clarke’s annual report bemoaned slow progress in implementing the new model of secure schools, agreed as a blueprint for the future in 2016 following Taylor’s first Youth Justice Review. The first school to be run by educational charity Oasis won’t open until 2022.  Unusually, Taylor himself used a piece in the Spectator to blame delays on tortuous bureaucracy in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the controlling instincts of the prison service. Whether running a secure school is compatible with charitable status has also arisen as an issue- although by my reckoning one existing secure childrens home in England is run by a charity – as are four out of five in Scotland. The MoJ has yet to honour its promise to publish the application by Oasis to run the new school although the process for appointing the Director is underway.

Keith Fraser took over from Taylor as Chair of the Youth Justice Board (YJB) in April. One of the Board’s five strategic objectives for 2020-21 has been “to see a youth justice system that sees children as children first, and offenders second.” In response to the Justice Committee in June, Fraser appeared to dismiss this as a matter of branding more than substance. In November, the Chief Probation Inspector,who also inspects youth offending teams (YOTs), thought it important not to lose sight of the second part of the formulation – offender- because of the risks to others presented by a sizable proportion of children known to YOTs.  A debate about the direction of youth justice policy and practice may be on the cards although the key role played by  YOTs – which celebrated their 20^th birthday this year – looks set to remain.  

A further YJB objective has been to influence the system to treat children fairly and reduce overrepresentation. In a somewhat tame report published in November, the Justice Committee wanted to know what the MoJ is doing to address racial disproportionality. More action is certainly needed. Nearly nine out of 10 children from London held in custody on remand are from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background. Encouragingly, a higher threshold for custodial remands was promised in September’s White Paper, sitting alongside less welcome proposals for longer sentences for serious crimes and tougher community supervision.  

While custody has been a bleaker experience than ever, the numbers have thankfully reduced to 535 in October 2020 from 791, 12 months earlier. Projections suggest that number could go up by 75% by 2026.  Much will depend on if, when and how the system gets back to normal as well as the changing nature of the challenges it has to face.