10. Memorandum from The Children's
Society
1. INTRODUCTION
The Children's Society is a national charity
working with children in order to address the problems and injustices
that they face. This includes work with children on the streets,
children with disabilities, refugee and asylum seeking children,
and those in the youth justice system.
The Children's Society has a significant amount
of experience of working with children held in prisons, through
its Remand Rescue and National Remand Review Initiatives, which
between 1997 and 2002 worked with approximately 6,000 children
remanded either to local authority secure units or Young Offender
Institutions. The work of these Initiatives has been captured
in our recent publication "A Beacon of Hope"[134].
This submission is largely based upon this report
and a research study conducted on our behalf by Barry Goldson
of the University of Liverpool entitled "Vulnerable Inside"
(2002)[135].
This study looked at the experiences of children remanded to Young
Offender Institutions compared to those of children accommodated
in local authority secure units due to welfare concerns. Copies
of these publications are submitted with this statement.
The Children's Society has drawn out the key
points from these publications in relation to the relevant articles
of the European Convention on Human Rights and the issues of suicide
and self-harm, poor treatment and protection from harm.
The terms "child" and "children"
has been used throughout this report to refer to "every human
being below the age of 18 years" in accordance with the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Children Act 1989.
2. HUMAN RIGHTS
AND CHILDREN'S
RIGHTS
The safeguards, protections and rights conferred
upon children by domestic legislation and international conventions,
in particular, the Children Act 1989 and the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child, should work together with the Human
Rights Act 1998, to offer a robust framework for the protection
of all children, including those held in prison. In practice,
however, this framework offers limited protection to some children,
particularly those in the youth justice system and in prisons.
The primary piece of child welfare legislation, the Children Act
1989, does not apply to the Prison Service itself despite the
recent High Court judgement which held that the Act applies to
children held in prison.
3. THE PROFILE
OF CHILDREN
HELD IN
PRISON CUSTODY
The background of children in prison is depressingly
familiar: poverty, poor educational attainment, family difficulties,
drug and alcohol problems, mental health and other factors feature
heavily in their profiles. The work of The Children's Society
bears this out. Of the 4,358 cases the National Remand Review
Initiative worked on between 1999-2002, monitoring statistics
show children with multiple patterns of disadvantage:
— Half of the children had been involved
with social services prior to their remand, with 10% of these
children subject to care orders and a further 20% accommodated
by the local authority.
— Over 40% of children were not living
with a parent prior to their remand—16% of these reported
no fixed abode, with a further 15% reporting unstable accommodation.
— Fewer than 20% of school-age children
were attending school. Almost 30% of children were excluded from
school while a further 34% were long-term non-attendees.
— Of those children beyond school leaving
age, two thirds were not working, in training or at college.
As summarised in Goldson (2002):
"Children whose lives have been damaged
and disfigured by disadvantage, neglect and abuse are the very
children who occupy the juvenile remand wings of our prisons.
These are the children for whom the fabric of life invariably
stretches across poverty; family discord; public care; drug and
alcohol abuse; mental distress; ill-health; emotional, physical
and sexual abuse; self harm; homelessness; isolation; loneliness;
circumscribed educational and employment opportunities; and the
most pressing sense of distress and alienation". (Goldson,
2002:51)
4. THE INAPPROPRIATE
USE OF
CUSTODY
Examining the findings of the National Remand
Review Initiative for a 12 month period, Goldson (2002) found
that a quarter of remanded children had been locked up for property
offences, and of those whose final court outcome was known, around
one-third had received a community sentence, and a further 5.6%
had their cases withdrawn, dismissed or found not guilty. This
information is used by Goldson to suggest that custody is being
used inappropriately for a significant number of children.
Whilst the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 created
powers for courts to remand children between the ages of 12 to
16 directly to local authority secure units, 15 and 16 year old
boys are required to fulfil the additional criteria of being designated
as "vulnerable" by the courts. This means that a court
must find that "by reason of his physical or emotional immaturity
or a propensity of his to harm himself, it would be undesirable
for him to be remanded to a remand centre or a prison". In
addition, a vacancy in a local authority secure unit has to have
been identified to enable a boy of 15 or 16 to be thus assessed
and remanded. In practice, this has resulted in courts either
opting not to carry out the assessment or boys being remanded
into a YOI despite being assessed as "vulnerable" on
both counts due to the lack of available space.
The last decade has seen an explosion in the
use of custody for children, increasingly for younger children
and for less serious offences. Most recently Section 130 of the
Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 has actually conferred upon
courts greater powers to remand to custody where persistent offending
on bail is an issue. Persistence has been defined by case law
as meaning "on more than one occasion". Prior to this
custodial remands were limited to those cases of children who
were perceived to be a serious risk of harm to themselves or others.
This new power has increased the use of custodial remand for children
and placed significant demands on both on the Prison Service and
local authority secure units.
I have just interviewed a boy on a £9.99
shop theft. They are persistent and a nuisance but no real threat
to the public at all. It is the persistence of their offending
which now makes the remand legal but it is quite unnecessary.
(NRRI practitioner in Goldson, 2002:126)
This measure is contrary to the articles of
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that states that
custody should be used as a "measure of last resort"
and for the "shortest possible time".
5. INSTITUTIONAL
RACISM
Goldson (2002) suggests that racism not only
means that black children are more likely (than their white counterparts)
to be remanded in custody, but they also face the prospect of
less favourable treatment and conditions. A quarter of children
people worked with the National Remand Review Initiative were
from a black or minority ethnic background—for the children
helped through by our London project the figure rises to almost
50%.
The Director General of the Prison Service has
recently acknowledged that the prison system is "institutionally
racist" (cited in Goldson, 2001:19).
I have long been concerned that the biggest single
problem facing the Director General is the culture that still
pervades parts of the prison system . . . It is a culture that
adopts an attitude to prisoners that is not only judgmental, but
too often includes physical and mental brutality . . . One of
its most obvious manifestations is in attitudes to minorities,
of whatever, kind, who are treated not as equal but as unequal
because of their minority status. There are . . . minority groups
whose inequality of treatment concerns me—ethnic or cultural
minorities. (Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons quoted in
Goldson, 2002:56)
The Children's Society, in partnership with
the Community Fund and the University of Central England, is currently
embarked upon a four-year programme of research examining the
experiences of black children of the youth justice system, including
their experience of prison custody. The first phase of the research,
looking at the prison system, is to be launched later this year.
6. UNHEALTHY
PRISONS
The physical and mental health needs of children
in prisons are significant and as such require sustained attention
from an expertly staffed and well-resourced range of health services.
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons has noted that over 50% of young
prisoners on remand and 30% of sentenced young offenders have
a diagnosable mental disorder. The British Medical Association
found that 17% of young offenders were not registered with a GP
and that the population of Young Offenders Institutions represent
a "concentration of unhealthy lifestyles" (Goldson 2002).
The Prison Service is being consistently starved
of adequate funding to meet this clinical and social care agenda
. . . the prison medical service has been in an acute crisis for
some time . . . because of the general shortage of resources in
prisons, prison medical officers often have inadequate support
from an appropriately qualified healthcare team . . . unqualified
"hospital officers" are given responsibility for aspects
of clinical care that in the NHS would only be given to clinical
staff with appropriate training. (British Medical Association
quoted in Goldson, 2002:57)
Despite the best efforts of health care staff
in prisons, children who have compelling health-related needs
are exposed to environments in which their health is likely to
deteriorate further.
7. SYSTEMIC BULLYING
Goldson (2002) acknowledges the hold that bullying,
in all its forms, has on the Prison Service:
There can be no doubt that physical assault is
commonplace. However, children are also exposed to other forms
of bullying, including sexual assault; verbal abuse (name-calling,
threats, racist taunting); extortion and theft; and lending and
trading cultures—particularly in relation to tobacco—involving
extraordinary rates of interest, which accumulate daily . . .
Moreover, bullying is contagious. It is entrenched within the
fabric of prison life; it is integral to the very incivility of
child imprisonment and it is an intrinsic feature of the survival-of-the-fittest
machismo that prevails. The bullied child is invariably also a
bully; the damaged wreak damage as the victim becomes the aggressor
within the corrosive environment that is prison . . . It is of
little surprise that within this culture of torment, children's
vulnerabilities are compounded and exposed. For all, bullying
perpetuates misery and fear. For some, it is literally too much
to bear. (Goldson 2002: 58/59)
The children interviewed by Goldson also articulated
a sense of hopelessness and a lack of faith in the ability of
prison officers to offer them protection:
It's going on all the time—threatening
you, shouting things, calling your mum names. There's nothing
you can do about it. You just have to cope with it. I don't know
how I do, you just do. My mate was hammered in the showers. When
the screws asked him what was wrong he said that he fell over.
If he had told him the truth, he'd have got hammered again. Most
of the staff are all right but some either ignore you or try to
wind you up. They swear at us and that, and call us names, and
they threaten to drag us down to the block. Every day . . . bullying
happens, there's fight every day. It's getting worser and worser.
A lad has just killed himself and I reckon that was through bullying.
A 16-year old lad . . . does not kill themself when they have
their whole life in front of them, I just picture it in my head
and it's bad, it's really bad. (Boy aged 15 in Goldson, 2002:147)
I was really scared in my pad. They are shouting
at you through the windows and that, saying, "I want your
breakfast in the morning" and stuff like that. I was lying
on my bed proper scared, thinking, "I don't want to go out
there in the morning, I don't want to go out at all". (Boy
aged 15 in Goldson, 2002:142)
It is hoped that the provision of advocacy services
for children in prisons, currently being developed by the Youth
Justice Board, will go some way to tackling the issue. To have
any real effect, however, this must go hand in hand with reform
of the Prison Service's Complaints and Representations Procedures
to bring them into line with the Children Act 1989 regulations
and procedures.
8. INFORMATION
BREAKDOWN
Indeed, the view that prison personnel should
take greater individual care of children, and that the prison
authorities should raise general standards, has made a very significant
policy impression over the last two years. Much of this new emphasis
has focused upon improving methods of vulnerability/risk assessment
to identify and screen out the most vulnerable children, but this
is itself a source of some concern. (Goldson, 2002:63)
The Youth Justice Board and Prison Service have
worked together to develop new assessment procedures for children
in the youth justice system. The ASSET assessment, created for
Youth Offending Teams, is completed at each stage of the youth
justice process. These forms should follow children into prisons,
along with a post-court report (PCR) completed at court following
a remand or sentence of custody. In addition, prison establishments
have been given form TV1 to complete at the reception stage for
every child.
Goldson (2002) in his study noted that prison
officers were very uncomfortable with the responsibility of predicting
the young person's vulnerability due to a lack of substantiating
information, limited time and resources. Goldson also reported
that both post-court reports (PCRs) and the ASSET assessment forms
were only received in 28% of cases and as many as one in five
children arrived at prison with no information at all:
If you receive it, it can be adequate, but most
of the time you are working cold and it's gut reaction on the
basis of an interview, which can be very short, and probably not
very accurate. (Prison Officer in Goldson, 2002:135)
We very seldom get all the information and we
only have to go on what the prisoner is telling us. We try to
pick up on body language, eye contact and the like, but at the
end of the day we just have to write down what they tell us. If
they say "no" to the history of self-harm question,
for example, then I will simply write down "inmate says no".
(Prison Officer in Goldson, 2002: 136)
What we need is a private room. Too much is going
on at reception. Sometimes at reception you just have to find
a corner space, anywhere that is not being occupied. We used to
be able to take them into a store cupboard but that's used for
something else now. (Prison Officer in Goldson, 2002: 137)
It's usually busy and noisy and rushed at reception.
It depends on the time that they arrive. There are times when
kids are seen in court at half-ten in the morning and we get them
at 10 to 7 at night. We then have to do reception, and everything
that goes with it for up to 15 kids before half-eight. (Governor
in Goldson, 2002:138)
It is, however, not very surprising that children
fail to open up to deeply personal questioning conducted in the
manner described above. This leaves staff and children in a highly
vulnerable situation. If a young person's history is unknown to
the prison officer on reception, then previous suicide and self-harm
attempts or mental health problems may go undetected. Therefore
a young person may be seen as coping and indicators of vulnerability
go unnoticed when, in fact, the young person is at very real risk:
It follows, therefore, that institutionally expedient,
hasty and necessarily cursory assessments, of the type routinely
applied to children in prisons, will inevitably carry serious
risks. They are not meaningful safeguards and any pretence otherwise
is profoundly misguided. (Goldson, 2002:63)
9. THE NEED
FOR SUPPORT
AND PROTECTION
The need for greater levels of support and protection
for children in prison, particularly on the first night, in preventing
self-harm and suicide is obvious. Goldson (2002) reports the anxieties
of children and prison officers:
It's really scary—you don't know what to
do and where to go. You have a little interview with an officer
and a nurse and they ask if you know why you've been remanded,
if you're all right, if you have any health problems and if you're
suicidal . . . I just said, "I'm all right" but I didn't
know if I was all right or not. I was just thinking, "What
will it be like?", that's all I could think about. I wasn't
really listening to what they were telling me. I kind of wanted
to get out of there but I didn't want to go to my cell. It was
weird. They just said that if you ever get bullied or feel down,
talk to an officer. I was thinking "Will they do owt. What
if I do get bullied? If I told them, would it stop?" You
hear all these rumours about what happens to grasses and I thought,
"There's no way I'm going to be a grass" but I was really
scared. (Boy aged 16)
I just felt really alone and down. They just
spoke to me like I was a piece of meat. They didn't make you feel
like a person. I know I broke the law and that, but they just
treated me like a piece of shit. They think `cos you're in prison,
and they're in uniform, they can just tell you to do what they
want and treat you as bad as they want. (Boy aged 16 in Goldson,
2002: 139)
There is no real first night support. We might
say that there is but it's all about back-covering really . .
. If it says check every 15 minutes and I do, I've done my bit,
so it's not my fault if it (self-harm or suicide) does happen.
That's hardly support though, is it? (Prison Officer)
We have been very lucky here. We have only had
one suicide and not that many attempted suicides. Bearing in mind
the way that they are treated on the first night, this is more
by luck than design. (Prison Officer in Goldson, 2002:141)
Goldson (2002) cites the Personnel Officer scheme
as an example of an attempt to address the "incongruous duality
of controlling and caring roles" within the role of the prison
officers. But even in "the best" of YOIs 49% of children
stated that their Personal Officers never met with them, compared
with 89% of those in "the worst" YOIs.
The Safeguarding Children report (2002) [136]produced
by the Joint Chief Inspectors concluded that:
8.19 Young people in YOIs still face the
gravest risks to their welfare, and this includes those children
who experience the greatest harm from bullying, intimidation and
self-harming behaviour.
8.20 The work of YOTs (Youth Offending Teams)
was detached from other services, and there was only limited evidence
that they were addressing safeguarding issues. The focus of their
work with young offenders was almost exclusively on their offending
behaviour, and did not adequately address assessing their needs
for protection and safeguarding. (Department of Health 2002:72)
Youth Offending Teams, in most instances, are
the agency best placed to facilitate the sharing of information
about the child in custody. But figures from the National Remand
Review Initiative show that in 13.4% of cases Youth Offending
Teams were unaware that the child was in custody prior to NRRI
making contact to discuss the remand (The Children's Society 2003).
Given that many these children are held at significant
distances from home, despite the commitment of the Youth Justice
Board to place children close to home, the sense of isolation
and the lack of information available to the prison serve to heighten
their vulnerability. The possibility of regular visits from family
members and their Youth Offending Team worker is also reduced.
10. CONCLUSIONS
The primary role of the Prison Officer is to
maintain discipline, order and institutional security. Set against
this is the duty of care, which arguably becomes more sharply
focused when the prisoner is also a child. (Goldson, 2002:65)
Whilst the Prison Service has a duty of care
to its prisoners, it is currently not required by the Children
Act 1989 to promote the welfare and protect the children it accommodates.
As a result, the welfare and protection of these children are
secondary considerations. In order to address properly the concerns
listed above, and to protect children's welfare and human rights,
we believe that the Children Act 1989 should apply to the Prison
Service itself as well as to the individual child.
The singular purpose of the youth justice system
in England and Wales is "to prevent offending" as laid
down by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. If children within this
system are to be properly cared for and protected and the risk
of suicide and self-harm reduced, then this must change. The Children's
Society, as part of a wider coalition of children's charities
and penal reform groups, has been lobbying for the Criminal Justice
Bill to be amended to include a clause which puts the welfare
of children at the heart of the system and places a duty upon
all agencies and institutions that deal with them to protect them
and promote their welfare. We are deeply concerned that Government
has missed an opportunity to properly address this issue in the
recently published Green Paper on children at risk (DFES 2003)
[137]and
its companion paper on youth justice (Home Office 2003)[138].
Finally, it is recommended that the principles
and rights bestowed upon children by the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child are fully integrated into the youth
justice system in England and Wales, in order to ensure that the
special protections conferred upon them due to their status as
children are fully applied.
The Children's Society would be happy to supply
any additional information that is required to support the work
of the Committee.
16 September 2003
134 Moore, S and Peters, E. A Beacon of Hope: Children
and young people on remand London: The Children's Society
2003. Back
135
Goldson, B. Vulnerable Inside: Children in secure and penal
settings London: The Children's Society 2002. Back
136
Chief Inspector of Social Services et al (2002) Safeguarding
Children: A joint Chief Inspectors' Report on Arrangements to
Safeguard Children London: Department of Health. Back
137
Every Child Matters (2003) London: DFES. Back
138
Youth Justice: The Next Steps (2003) London: Home Office. Back
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