Youth justice roundup: Detained children, reoffending rates and YOI bullying

Police are being urged to stop detaining children after figures reveal that almost 800 boys and girls are locked up in cells overnight every week. Research by the Howard League for Penal Reform found that the Metropolitan Police held 13,860 children in cells overnight in 2011, higher than any other police force in the country. Frances Crook, chief executive of the charity, said it is “unjustifiable” to detain children overnight.

Reoffending rates among young people have halved in Ipswich, thanks to the Challenge 4 Change programme. According to the Newmarket Weekly News, the programme, which is jointly run by the police and Suffolk’s Youth Offending Service, the reoffending rate among young people fell from 24.5 per cent in April 2012 to 9.7 per cent in April this year.

The acting governor of a young offenders’ institution (YOI) in Leeds has told an inquest that bullying was a problem around the time a teenager hanged himself in his cell. According to the Yorkshire Evening Post, Angie Petit said that Ryan Clark, 17, was subjected to abusive “shout outs” from other prisoners the night before he was found at Wetherby YOI.

And finally, the search for Kent’s first youth crime commissioner is under way for a second time. According to Kent Online, crime commissioner Ann Barnes has posted an advert for the £15,000-a-year job. Paris Brown, 16, quit the role in April, just days into the job after a series of abusive tweets she had posted became public.