A five-point plan for urgent youth custody reform

The case for dramatic change is made by another voice inside government, Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons and former chair of the YJB. In last month’s annual report, Taylor describes levels of violence and self-harm rising by just over a quarter and a third respectively in the last year. Nearly a third of teenagers spent less than two hours each day out of their cells. Nearly a third said they had not a single person they could trust to help them if they had a problem. A school that reported such results would be closed instantly.

Each year, Taylor’s annual report charts further deterioration. The government, now on its eighth youth justice minister in three years, seems at times unprepared to even acknowledge this problem.

One school of thought blames the children in custody for much of this deterioration, constantly parroting facts about the growth in the proportion of children in custody for offences of violence as an explanation for most of the problem. There’s truth in this, but if the solution is to adopt more repressive responses, adding pepper sprays to the Malinois dogs and stun grenades already used, things will only get worse. Violence breeds violence.

Children are not to blame for this crisis. Nor are the staff and leaders of the Youth Custody Service who daily try to do an incredibly difficult job without even remotely being given the right resources to do it. What is needed is an immediate circuit breaker, a real investment in the future. The government could:

1. Order an immediate and significant pay rise to staff at the coal face, together with training and support reforms to make this a job high-quality people want to do.

2. Reduce the capacity of each children’s prison to get nearer the “no more than 35 children per unit” mantra that has been advocated.

3. Devolve the day-to-day running of children’s prisons to local trusts with strong representation from children’s services, the NHS and charities.

4. Incentivise all involved to dramatically increase the use of day release on temporary licences to give children hope for the future and a break from the violence.

5. Declare that very prompt action will be taken to spread lessons learnt from the new secure school, opening in the spring, and speed up the creation of the second secure school government has promised since 2017.

Repression and more violence will not work. The current cycle needs to be broken. We await a government with the vision and ambition to do this. My advice to the new minister, Edward Argar, is: listen to your advisors’ calls for reform.