Incapacitating Children in Custody

 

Two days after announcing a trial into the use of Conductive Energy Devices (tasers) in adult male prisons, the Justice Secretary has authorised the use of PAVA, (synthetic pepper spray) in the three publicly run Young Offender Institutions (YOI) which hold children under 18.

A Ministry of Justice study on use of force spells out the overwhelming and painful effects of being on the receiving end of PAVA. Adult prisoners described feeling unable to breathe, and how the effects lasted more than an hour after exposure. One prisoner said: “My face felt like it was on fire, I couldn't see. I was just left on my own”.

Some of those affected were provided with a laminated paper outlining what should happen by way of aftercare but weren’t able to read it due to the impact of PAVA. Exposure to fresh air after an incident, and timely access to healthcare, “seemed inconsistent.”

Is this what we have come to in dealing with the youngest people in the prison estate?

Yes, there is a real and serious problem of violence in youth prisons. Latest data suggest it has been getting worse still, with assaults in 2024 up almost 25% on the previous year. But there are surely better ways to reduce it. After all , the availability of PAVA has not been conspicuously successful in curbing violence in adult jails, where assaults on staff reached a new peak last year. Before then Prisons Minister Rory Stewart rolled out its use in 2018, a pilot scheme “was unable to conclusively demonstrate that PAVA had any direct impact on levels of prison violence”.

So what is the answer? Monitors at Cookham Wood Young Offender Institution have recently reported on the final few weeks before the YOI closed last year. They found that “when the number of boys was very low, there was a glimpse of what a more positive regime could look like. This was an entirely different establishment, humane, offering a good amount of education and other activities; and where officers had the time to work more closely with individual boys.

Moreover “the small units were able to support the needs of boys with very challenging behaviour, including violence. Increased time out of room calmed the boys; they were occupied with education and increased association time.” The watchdog found it “very sad that the Youth Custody Service (YCS) had been unable to offer this type of regime previously at Cookham Wood.

This surely is the way forward for youth custody. To be fair, Shabana Mahmood told MPs in the longer-term, “we intend to move away from the current estate based on the evidence of what works for young people in custody. We will learn from the pilot of the first ever Secure School and the operation of Secure Children’s Homes (SCH).

But ministers have been saying much the same for more than seven years. In November 2017, a then Justice Minister told MPs he expected “that over the next 10 years or so, because it will take time, we will replace everything with secure schools.” Successive governments have neither sustained the political will nor found the money to do it. The daily cost of a place in a YOI is about £350, compared to £950 in a SCH.

According to the Chair of the Prison Officers Association, “a 17 year old armed with a knife is just as lethal as a terrorist prisoner.”  Let’s hope we aren’t going down a road  which leads to children in custody eventually being tasered too.