Transforming youth custody: sector feeds into vision for radical reform

Plans to transform youth custody through a focus on education are likely to result in a radically different secure estate for under-18s.

But although the Ministry of Justice has outlined its desire to introduce so-called secure colleges to boost attainment and reduce re-offending, precise details of how the system will look were scant in February’s green paper.

As a result, responses to the consultation, which closed on 30 April, are likely to be prominent in shaping the specifics – from the type of provision on offer through to the courses and qualifications available and who runs them. Four key themes have emerged in the responses from the sector: education, resettlement, sentences and behaviour.

EDUCATION
The green paper said that learning will focus on basic educational skills such as literacy and numeracy, and include options for young people who have higher levels of education, including qualifications and vocational skills.

But the Prison Education Trust is concerned that too rigid a focus on literacy and numeracy could alienate young people who are already statistically likely to have struggled in an academic setting.

“Targeting particular educational qualifications, however much they may be of value in themselves, can drive the system to pursue its own numerical targets in ways that fail to meet the real needs of children or to engage them effectively,” its response says.

“Education must be seen as encompassing learning in its broadest sense.

“This includes informal, creative, vocational and academic learning as well as activities that broaden horizons and promote personal development.

“For some young people, tackling their own personal and psychological issues may simply be a greater priority than an academic qualification.”

RESETTLEMENT
The reoffending rate – which currently stands in excess of 70 per cent – and ways to reduce it, is addressed by many respondees. The Association of Youth Offending Team Managers (AYM) highlights the importance of linking custodial and community provision. It says: “We would expect to see secure colleges developing partnerships with community colleges and academies, and would like to see opportunities for young people, after an appropriate risk assessment, to move into the equivalent of ‘open prisons’ from which they can attend courses and activities in the community.

“Transition from secure to community educational provision does not work well at present and there is much scope for improvement.”

The Standing Committee for Youth Justice recommends that the government places a statutory duty on all local services – schools, colleges, child and adolescent mental health services, housing, police and children’s services – to support the rehabilitation of young people leaving custody, similar to existing leaving care provisions.

It also calls for greater use of release on temporary licence (ROTL) from young offender institutions to allow young people in custody to attend interviews for education, training or employment and to start attending a job, or college before release.

“Greater use of mobility can help young people to secure education, training or employment placements prior to release and to make a gradual transition to the community. The current arrangement, whereby you don’t usually get ROTL unless you are serving a longer sentence – and then under restricted circumstances – should be overhauled.”

It also calls for “post-release therapy” to be explored, whereby work usually associated with trying to address issues prior to custody, such as multisystemic therapy, is instead used to support resettlement.

“For some highly vulnerable children in secure settings who have missed out on these opportunities before sentence, we should use these resources at the point of release to save longer-term costs, improve their future prospects and their chances of reoffending,” the response states.

SENTENCES
The green paper paves the way for greater variation in the length of detention and training orders (DTO), which currently average just over three months.

The Howard League for Penal Reform shares concerns that a substantial amount of progress is difficult to achieve in such a short period of time.

It backs the introduction of a minimum 12-month order, but wants sentencing thresholds to be raised at the same time so that sentences for young offenders are not “up-tariffed” to meet the minimum sentence length requirement.

“It is vital that the government does not lengthen custodial sentences in order to provide more time for educational providers, either in child prisons or new secure colleges, as that would be sentencing children to receive an education rather than sentencing them for what they have actually done,” the charity’s response states.

“Strong guidelines would need to be provided to ensure that youth courts do not automatically up-tariff all children who might otherwise receive shorter DTOs than the new threshold.”

BEHAVIOUR
The way establishments are run, and by whom, is another big question.

The Standing Committee for Youth Justice says it is vital that staff in secure colleges want to work with young people and have experience of doing so.

It wants a high minimum standard of training for staff, and moots the development of “a distinct and attractive career path, which incentivises high-achieving graduates and professionals from related fields to join the staff team of colleges”.

Career paths should enable staff to progress while remaining in a frontline role, it adds. “Staff should not just have one-off training but receive ongoing development through supervision encouraging reflective practice.”

Violence continues to be an issue in the youth secure estate. To address this, the AYM wants restorative justice to be “central to the way relationships are managed in the secure estate”.

It explains: “We are aware of many schools which have successfully adapted restorative justice to form the basis of their anti-bullying strategies, and of several local authorities who have introduced it across all their residential units. The latter has resulted in significant reductions in incidents of violence towards staff and the number of police call-outs. We would expect to see maximum use of restorative justice techniques and minimum use of physical restraint in secure accommodation.”

The AYM wants safeguarding to be a “key priority” for senior management, with the senior manager playing an active role on the local safeguarding children board. “We would also expect to see a local authority social worker placed inside the establishment to support the safeguarding programme,” it says.

Expert View
Tim Bateman, criminologist at the University of Bedfordshire

“There is a commitment to put education at the heart of custody, but how that will be done is left to the consultation exercise to flesh out.

One of the factors affecting the possible success of the reforms is that the focus is on education, almost to the point of excluding other considerations. It is easy to see how you might get there because it is quite clear from research that children in custody have a history of educational disengagement and failure. It is equally clear that prospects for children when they come out of custody will be immeasurably enhanced if their time inside allows them to catch up a little. But to focus on education without looking at the other kinds of factors and disadvantages is rather one-sided. A history of exclusion, disengagement, and non-attendance at school only makes coherent sense if you look at it in the context of the broader circumstances of social exclusion, economic disadvantage, a history of care and high levels of mental ill health. Improving education without addressing the way establishments respond to a much broader range of welfare needs just won’t work.

There is also a risk that combining punishment with compulsory education is a recipe for further alienating these young people. The vast majority of young offenders in custody are aged 16 or 17, so most will consider themselves over school age. If you start imposing education on them and think it is the solution, the chances of it delivering much better outcomes are probably limited.

How effective the reforms will be largely depends on the establishments in which you lock children up. My view is that the fall in numbers in custody represents an opportunity to shift from a reliance on large-scale institutions with low staff-to-child ratios to a model of provision that is local, and small-scale, with high staff-to-child ratios.”


In numbers

1,320 under-18s in custody as of February 2013 (most recent data)

761 on a detention and training order

281 on remand

278 on long-term sentence

Source: Ministry of Justice