(Girl, aged 11, UK, 2009)[i]

On Friday 20 November 2009 CRAE is launching its report on the State of Children's Rights in England 2009.  We have key themes that we are following each day until that public launch. Today's theme is 'Children deprived of liberty’.

The United Kingdom is one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world and yet we are regularly criticised by international human rights bodies for our treatment of the UK’s most vulnerable children, including locking children up unnecessarily in the juvenile justice and immigration systems.   In this year’s anniversary edition of the State of Children’s Rights report, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) calls on the UK Government to introduce a legal safeguard making child custody a genuine measure of last resort, to transform conditions in child prisons and to end the detention of children for immigration purposes.

CRAE’s legal director, Katy Swaine, said:

The UK’s readiness to lock up children and keep them in unsafe conditions – whether in prison or immigration detention - is a national scandal of which we should all feel deeply ashamed.  Unless the present Government takes urgent action, its legacy will be to leave us with thousands of vulnerable children locked up unnecessarily in unsafe conditions, with still no public inquiry into any child death in custody nor into the unlawful use of physical force on children.  How long must children wait before the Government finds the courage to stand up for them and meet its legal obligations?

High aspirations – for all children? 

All the main political parties express high aspirations for the nation’s children.  However, these aspirations do not always extend to all children.  In his 2007 Children’s Plan, the UK’s first Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families set out a ten-year strategy for making England the ‘best place in the world for children and young people to grow up’.[ii]  This cannot be achieved until the challenge of reforming the juvenile justice system is wholeheartedly taken on by Government at the highest level, and until children’s best interests are truly prioritised in the immigration system. 

Following the tragic death of Baby Peter, the Government has again keenly focused attention on improvements to the child protection system, recognising that the best way to keep children safe is to respect their rights – including their right to be heard.  However, despite 30 child deaths in custody since 1990 and overwhelming evidence of the harm caused to children by immigration detention, we have so far seen nothing like the same strong leadership from Government Ministers on behalf of children deprived of their liberty. 

Immigration detention of children – a national scandal

They pushed me on the floor and got my hands behind me… then they took me to the van. I was on my own in the van and I didn’t know what was happening to my family. (11 year-old child, UK, 2009)[iii]

In 2008 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child criticised the UK for its continued detention of children and young people for immigration purposes.  Yet despite heavy criticism and clear evidence that detaining children and their families is deeply damaging for children and young people, the Government’s policy remains unchanged.

Between January and June 2009, 470 children and young people entered immigration detention.[iv] Far from being a last resort these figures suggest that children and young people are being detained routinely.  Personal testimony from children makes clear that the experience of detention is deeply traumatising.

The best interests of children and young people in the immigration system are still not being prioritised. Immigration detention of children must end.

UK juvenile justice – too many children locked up and unsafe

… My nose started bleeding and swelled up and it didn't stop bleeding for about one hour and afterwards it was really sore. When I calmed down I asked them why they hit me in the nose and jumped on me. They said it was because I wouldn't go in my room so I said what gives them the right to hit a 14-year-old child in the nose and they said it was restraint.

(Adam Rickwood, aged 14, UK, 2004.  Adam killed himself a few hours after writing this statement.) 

Too many children in custody

In England and Wales we have one of the highest child custody populations in the western world, standing at an average of 2,932 in the year 2007-08.[v] The UK Government and all main political parties agree that too many children are in prison.  However, the Government has failed to take the radical action required to drastically reduce numbers.

The Prison Reform Trust reports that the number of children sentenced to custody more than tripled between 1991 and 2006[vi], although the figure has dropped slightly in the last year.  Detention is not used as a measure of last resort, nor for the shortest appropriate period.  In 2007, 219 children aged 15-17 years-old entered prison in England and Wales for motoring offences, 105 for disorderly behaviour, 70 for criminal damage, 35 for fraud and forgery and three for drunkenness.[vii]  In its study of 214 children aged 12 to 14 who were sentenced to Detention and Training Orders (custodial sentences) in 2007-08, Barnardo’s found that 35% did not even meet the existing criteria for custody under English law.[viii]  

During the passage of the 2008 Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice achieved cross-party support for the principle of establishing a statutory custody safeguard to prevent children being sent to prison other than for reasons of public protection.  However, this continues to be resisted by Government. 

Unsafe conditions

Just last week, a jury at an inquest into the death of 15 year old Liam McManus in 2008 in HMYOI Lancaster Farms returned a damning verdict finding that "systemic failings" in both the prison and the community contributed to his death. These failings meant that an accurate picture of Liam was never established by the prison resulting in him never receiving the right level of support.  He was the thirtieth child to die in UK penal custody since 1990.

Official figures show that children are restrained an average of 656 times a month in the English and Welsh juvenile secure estate.  Two inspectorate reports published this year reveal that shocking restraint practices continue in child prisons. In relation to HMYOI Cookham Wood, inspectors describe ‘an unsafe and poorly controlled environment’ with high levels of use of force and a ‘safeguarding policy’ which remains ‘largely unimplemented’.[ix]

Reporting on HMYOI Castington, inspectors found that less than half of the staff had been vetted by the Criminal Records Bureau to check they were safe to work with children.[x] There was an ‘unprecedented’ use of restraint on children, which had resulted in the fracture of young people’s wrists and, on one occasion, a knee; in the previous two years, there had been seven confirmed and three suspected fractures at the institution. Inspectors found that the largest category of child protection referrals at the YOI related to allegations of physical assault by staff, and that a further 10 allegations related to staff using undue force during restraint. The Inspectorate called for an independent investigation into the use of restraint at the YOI.

An independent review of restraint of children in custody reported to Ministers in June 2008 and was published in December 2008 together with the Government’s response.  Both documents were deeply flawed due to their limited scope and because they failed to take account of the Court of Appeal judgment in R (C) v Secretary of State for Justice [2008] which found that children had been unlawfully restrained for the purposes of ensuring good order and discipline in secure training centres over a period of years, including through the use of deliberately painful restraint techniques.  The Government continues to endorse the use of deliberately painful restraint and has refused to hold an Article 3 compliant public inquiry into the identified unlawful practices, to hold individuals and institutions to account, and to enable children to seek redress.  The Government’s detailed timescale for implementation of reforms remains unclear, one year on. 

Need for strong leadership and radical reform

Later this month, CRAE will publish a report jointly with the NSPCC and INQUEST in which we will again press the Government to ban deliberately painful restraint techniques; to make clear in legislation that physical restraint is not permitted in order to ensure good order and discipline; and to hold a public inquiry into the past unlawful use of physical force in child prisons.   We will ask the Government to transform the juvenile justice system by showing true leadership and commitment at the most senior level to the rights of children in custody.  This must include the primacy of children’s best interests, as required by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Only by taking this bold step can the Government serve the needs of children and wider society, including achieving the aims of the juvenile justice system to prevent reoffending.

 

 

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[i] 11 MILLON (2009). The arrest and detention of children subject to immigration control

[ii] Department for Children, Schools and Families (December 2007).  The Children's Plan: Building brighter futures.

[iii]  11 MILLON (2009). The arrest and detention of children subject to immigration control

[iv] Home Office (2009). Control of immigration: quarterly statistical summary, United Kingdom April – June 2009

[v] Youth Justice Board (2009). Youth Justice Annual Workload Data 2007/08

[vi] Prison Reform Trust (June 2009). Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile.

[vii] Ministry of Justice (2008). Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2007.

[viii] Barnardo’s (August 2009). Locking up, giving up: why custody thresholds for teenagers aged 12, 13 and 14 need to be raised.

[ix] Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons (2009). Report on an announced inspection of HMYOI Cookham Wood 2-9 February 2009 by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons.

[x] Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons (2009). Report on an announced inspection of HMYOI Castington 19-23 January 2009 by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons.