Time for new thinking on custody for children

First, there is the overall fate of the custodial estate for children. For seven years the government has repeated its 2017 view that prison-like young offender institutions (YOIs) and the sole remaining secure training centre (STC) should be phased out. No timetable has been attached to this and it has taken all of the intervening seven years to create the first of the planned replacements, the Oasis Restore secure school, which opens later this month. Originally, we were told that there would also be a secure school in the North of England but has not even reached planning stage. Meanwhile, the case for drastic improvements has only grown with ever increasing dire inspection reports about YOIs and at times the STC.

The new government now has an ideal opportunity to rethink custody for children as the Youth Custody Service (YCS) has started to prepare a new strategy for custody. Full marks to the YCS for taking this initiative, and for building widespread consultation into this. The new minister should seize this opportunity to produce a fresh, distinctive, and child-focused vision for the future.

Within this strategy there is a vexed issue of how children should be controlled in custody. The Prison Officers Association has very skilfully lobbied for their members to be able to use pepper sprays to control children, despite inconclusive evidence about its use in adult prisons. Insiders say that this was about to be announced in the very week the Prime Minister unexpectedly called the general election.

This pause should allow a new youth justice minister to rethink the issues here. In the history of imprisonment in England violence always leads to more violence in depressing downward spirals. Prison officers need our support in doing their very difficult job. But equipping them with more powers of repression is not the way to go. We need more staff per child, more consistent leadership, and skills in de-escalation, not more violence.

Finally, the whole government should ask itself whether custody for children is best led exclusively by the Ministry of (adult) Justice, and the Prison Service. Go back 15 years when children’s ministers were directly involved in children’s custody. Does it really make sense that this most sensitive area of state childcare is not overseen by the children’s minister? The previous shared responsibility, up to 2010, was often complex and at times cumbersome. I know as I reported to both the Secretaries of State for Justice and Children, Schools and Families at the time. But it was undoubtedly better than what has followed. For a while, it created an approach more focused on the needs of children. Time for a rethink? I think so.

John Drew is senior associate at the Prison Reform Trust