Nasty, hellish and possessing the ability to make bad people worse. This is the way some sentencers regard the juvenile secure estate, according to a new Youth Justice Board (YJB) study.
The report, Fine Art or Science, finds that despite scepticism about the value of custody, there is a widespread view among sentencers that custodial sentences are handed to young offenders because they have become "unavoidable".
This can be down to the seriousness of an offence, but the report reveals judges and magistrates more commonly describe feeling that community alternatives have been exhausted and "enough is enough".
The findings coincide with a Justice Committee report published last week that claims current sentencing policy risks being driven by a "misconception of what the public want", which can often be interpreted as longer custodial sentences.
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