Action needed to help girls in custody
John Drew
Monday, June 24, 2019
A decade ago, there was an average of 166 girls in custody at any one time. Now there are only 28, a more rapid fall than that for boys. This is good news, of course, but a recent report by Pippa Goodfellow, director of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, highlights why there is no room for complacency. Here are three reasons why.
First, this low number does not mean that we have yet reached the "custody as a last resort" threshold that underpins international conventions on the treatment of children in trouble. A third of girls were sent to custody for non-violent offences and 58 per cent were guilty of offences at the less serious end of the offending spectrum.
Second, these girls have high levels of assessed vulnerability, suggesting they should be in the welfare rather than the justice system.
Third, girls from black and minority ethnic communities are significantly over-represented in the group of children in custody, especially among those on custodial remand. Labour MP David Lammy has challenged all criminal justice organisations to "explain" the reason for this bias - or reform. As yet, no explanation is forthcoming.
These are long-term problems that need long-term fixes. We could start by implementing the recommendation of the Youth Custody Improvement Board from 2017 to carry out a thorough review of the needs of children in custody.
There is also a short-term measure that would improve the position of these girls and which would cost nothing.
Government figures show that two-thirds of girls in custody, around 18, are held in secure training centres (STCs) with the remainder in secure children's homes (SCHs). Four out of five girls in STCs have told inspectors that they have not felt safe there. Why not move all girls to SCHs now? Generally, children describe feeling safer in children's homes, and the regime in most children's homes is much better placed to help these most needy young people.
The Youth Custody Service has bought 107 places in SCHs for the next three years, but is using only 73 of these at the moment. This means that £7.1m is being spent on empty beds annually.
If the 18 girls in STCs were moved immediately to children's homes there would still remain spare capacity to cope with any surge in demand for boys. It would also provide a better place from which to offer the care that so many of these young people obviously need.
There are some complexities of detail that would need to be fixed, but the scale of underuse means there are unused resources available for these girls. Let's do this now.
- Pippa Goodfellow's report, Outnumbered, locked up and over-looked? from the Griffins Society www.thegriffinssociety.org
- John Drew is senior associate, the Prison Reform Trust
