Joint Committee On Human Rights Written Evidence


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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