Locking children in custody must never be a "waiting room" for those whose real needs are care, housing, or mental health support, England’s Children’s Commissioner has warned.
Despite government figures revealing a 3 per cent fall to 430 children in custody in the year to March 2024 – the lowest number on record – Dame Rachel de Souza’s concerns remain.
The Commissioner explicitly called for all young offender institutions to be shut down out over time, advocating for their replacement with a new youth justice system "based primarily upon a rehabilitative model of care".
Dame Rachel, who is delivering the annual Longford lecture on Tuesday evening, is expected to warn that remanding children into custody takes their innocence and they are essentially told from that point they are guilty.
Her new report into the issue referenced government data showing that, in the year ending March 2024, almost two thirds (62 per cent) of children remanded to youth detention accommodation did not go on to be handed a custodial sentence.
Of all those children who were not given a custodial sentence, having already been locked up while awaiting trial, more than a quarter (28 per cent) were acquitted or had their case dismissed, while 72 per cent were given a non-custodial sentence.
In her report, Dame Rachel said: “Last year, 441 children who were locked up in custody awaiting their hearing did not end up receiving a custodial sentence.
“Another 168 children had their case dismissed altogether.
“These are not harmless delays.
“Even a short spell in custody can be profoundly damaging to a child.
“From disrupting education, cutting them off from their family and community and sometimes entrenching the vulnerabilities that brought them into contact with the justice system in the first place.
“That experience leaves a mark, one that lasts long after their release.”
The commissioner’s office said that despite a fall in the use of remand over the past decade, the average length of time children were held on remand rose by 89 per cent since 2013/14 to 125 nights – more than four months – in 2021/22.
Dame Rachel’s office said more than one in 10 (14 per cent) remand cases were longer than 182 days, longer than both the custody limit of 56 days at magistrates’ court and the upper limit of 182 days at crown court.
While she said the system had been tweaked over the years, she is recommending a fundamental change, and is expected to call in her speech for the eventual closure of all young offender institutions.
Dame Rachel will say children are being let down, adding: “By failing to provide moral leadership and show them what it means to be a child today.
“We have left a vacuum in the services that children need, in the moral and social fabric of our country.
“We have left it to children to fill it for themselves.
“We have retreated from our moral duty towards these children.
“And then we are surprised when they fall down.
“It is the way that we treat these children that we should be judged on.”
She will warn that if a child ends up in custody, that “usually means countless chances missed further up the line” and that there is a sense of complacency around this group, saying: “We have treated it as a battle won.
“That we have got down to a several hundred, rather than a several thousand children in custody.”
Dame Rachel will add: “We have tweaked the forms of custody with the secure school, but not the fundamental approach to locking children up.
“We cannot stop at the last 400.
“We have to close all young offender institutions.”
Her report noted that children from black and mixed backgrounds are overrepresented in custodial remand, “underscoring how bias can impact every step of their experience in the youth justice system”.
She wrote: “Custody is the most extreme intervention the state can make in a child’s life and it may be necessary in a very small number of serious cases.
“But it is not, and must never become, a waiting room for children whose real need is care, housing or mental health support.
“Or as one secure setting staff member aptly described, ‘a production line of pointlessness’.”
Her report recommends an “ambitious national reform that redesigns the secure care system to prioritise treating children who offend, first and foremost, as children who are in need of specialised support”.
Dame Rachel argued there should “no longer be continued attempts to reform an unsatisfactory youth justice estate that fails to meet these children’s complex needs”.
She said a new youth justice system “must be based primarily upon a rehabilitative model of care developed by DfE (the Department for Education) and NHS England, with an improved education and engagement offer”.
She outlined the need for “smaller, homely settings close to where children live” and said there must be a “clear, time-bound plan to phase out all young offender institutions and secure training centres”.
The government has been contacted for comment.
