Introduction
Custody arrangements in England and Wales
The issue regarding juvenile custody arrangements for youths under the age of 18 years is now, more than ever, evoking a conversation about the youth juvenile’s welfare. Like any criminal offender, youth under the age of 18 years has the right to be held in a secure centre if they have been found on the law’s wrong side. As per the Children’s custody in the United Kingdom, where a young man has been found to have erred on the wrong side of criminal law, they deserve the bare minimum of a secure centre (Government Digital Service, 2011). This statement, which embodies the ideals of criminal justice, means that any person under 18 years found guilty of an offence and sent to prison deserves to be placed in a secure institution of youth offending, secure and well-conditioned children and, if possible, a secure training centre. This is in addition to England and Wales’s Youth Justice Board’s responsibility to supervise detained youth under 18 in custody (Youth Justice Board, 2021). Further, security and safety, in addition to being given room to address the root causes of their offensive conduct, is a pivotal role the board oversees.
Therefore, considering the view of Day (2020), it is critical that the institutions tasked with the custody arrangements of youth under 18 for rehabilitation and reformation function effectively. The importance of ensuring that proper custodial living conditions and welfare of the juvenile youths while guaranteeing their safety and security has long been recognised as a principle of reducing the potentiality of the youth juvenile convict reoffending and its consequent ripple effect on public safety whilst focusing on respecting and upholding young people in custody’s fundamental rights and freedoms.
An inter-institutional cooperation glance at the juvenile in custody arrangements with a core focus on the Youth Juvenile Board explains why it must engage other agencies to ensure that the under-18 youth in custody receive readily available acceptable support, including health and health education services. Such will majorly boost, if not catalyse, their reformation. So essential is the YJB in the turning around of the juvenile journey that it provides the young people’s much-needed support and, by extension, to the families when they are serving their sentences in custody. Helping the rehabilitated youth in custody transition and be readmitted as reformed members back into the community heralds an atmosphere of positive expectations from the criminal justice system.
This paper will critically discuss the various thematic issues regarding the welfare arrangements of youth under 18 years in prison. The custody arrangements are particularly pertinent as they are part of the indica for criminal justice, without which unfairness, ethnicity, the effect of the sentence length on the youth and their feelings and living conditions under the custody arrangements.
The role of the HM Inspectorate of prisons
The focus on the HM Inspectorate of Prisons has now, more than before, shifted towards the children and young people (between the age of 12-18) under custody arrangements. Custody or sentence arrangements of youth offenders under 18 eras has been hailed as an ideal manner through which the youth offenders are rehabilitated from their criminal atrocities or infractions and reintroduced back to society as reformed persons in the society justifying the whole aspect of reformative and restorative justice (HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales Annual Report 2015-16, 2016). As per the Ministry of justice in their 2020/2021 report, a monthly average of 560 youths under the age of 18-year-olds were held under youth custody arrangements. These statistics garnered much-needed applause meaning that the number has halved the figures recorded in 2014/2015, i.e., 1,037 and five times less than in 2008/2009. This is in addition to the various custody arrangements that such youth are placed in to serve their sentences while undergoing rehabilitation. In England and Wales, such groups of persons are placed in either of the following institutions; a Youth Offenders Institution (YOI) (accounting for 17 per cent of 73 per cent of the youth under custody arrangements, a Secure Training Center (STC) and a Secure Children’s Home (SCH). It is, therefore, critical that such custody arrangements create a conducive environment for the youth to avoid young people, i.e. under t18 years of age to shun from reoffending upon serving their sentences.
The importance of developing proportionality on the lines of ethnicity has long been recognised as the cornerstone upon which the ideals of the criminal justice system for both the victim and the offender are reasoned to function effectively. It is, therefore, critical for the Youth Justice Board, in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice, to work with other stakeholders to ensure that the various issues of ethnicity, security and the youth in custody are well taken care of. An analytical glance at the HM Inspectorate of Prisons report regarding the Children in Custody 2017-2018 reveals key concerns and perceived experiences of the youth in the young offender institutions and those admitted in secure centres of training, building up to the additional concerns noted in the Jacqueline Beard’s research briefing of Youth custody under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice (Beard, 2022). Being a progressive reporting of 2016 /2017, the 2017-18 report revealed consistent racial segregation in youth custody, precisely the profiling of children under secure training centres (HM Inspectorate of Prisons Children in Custody 2017-18 An analysis of 12-18-year-olds’ perceptions of their experiences in secure training centres and young offender institutions, 2018). Empirically and statistically, such profiling identified children by race, with 42% of the 686 completed surveys revealing the children in the centre being identified by colour, either black or another minority ethnic minority.
The experience of the youth under 18 being segregated or profiled by gender has not changed. Such justifies the key finding of the HM-Inspectorate-Youth Justice Board that saw 8% of the children in the STC facing gender profiling as being female. Such is the kind of sexism in custody arrangements that the Ministry and other stakeholders do not envisage. Religion equally infiltrated the profiling an eight of the identified children being profiled to profess to the Islam religion. 11% of the sampled proportion professed to be from a Traveller or Gypsy background, reflective of 0.01 of the population (Bradford, 2014). Alive to the factors affecting the custody of the children, the Minister of Justice’s 2020-21 report revealed heightening concern regarding the segregation and safety of the young people under YOIs, STC and SC. Admittedly, the youth report, as briefed by the Ministry of Justice, takes cognisance of the concerns that various agencies such as the Children’s Commissioner, A Human Rights Joint Committee and various organisations that inter-alia include the Howard League for Penal Reform regarding the current youth custody’s concerns noted manifest lack of safety in the custody arrangements and other centres where the young offenders were serving the sentences. Inhumanely, the stakeholders noted rampant employment of force and restraint using techniques that naturally induce pain. Disturbingly, some children were segregated from others, heralding the negatives of the custody or sentence arrangements and the catalytic effect on reoffending matters. Surfacing of reports showing an apparent absence of purposeful capacity or skill building during the out-of-the-cell time worsened the situation.
Empirical data from the 2017-2018 HM Inspectorate concerning the children in custody further revealed the wanting state of the young people and custody arrangements. So disturbing was the state of the STC that 34 % of the surveyed young people expressed safety concerns at one point upon their arrival at the ST. A representative of the population, i.e. 14%, expressed their concern regarding their unsafety during the inspection. The same children that reported unsafety reported a bad experience regarding being victimised. At a perusal of the empirical findings of the STC section, the feeling of more than fifty per cent of the children as a representative of the young people population therein was that the centre physically restrained while at the centre. Disturbingly, 30% of the sampled population reported having been faced by other children through them being shouted through the windows.
Further, the Youth Offenders’ Institutions are not bereft of worrying trends empirically evidenced by data. Being a report seeking to understand whether the issues raised regarding custody arrangements, the situation of boys profiling seems not to have changed. In responding to the survey, it was fifty-one of the sampled boys’ contention that their identity was associated with their rate, i.e. being either a minority ethnic group or balance. Being under 18, the boys’ proportion that had benefited from the local authority’s care rested at 39 per cent, with nearly a quarter of the boys being identified as Muslim. A fifth of the boys translating to nineteen per cent of the sampled data were reportedly disabled.
Half of the young people under YOI felt physically restrained in their place of custody, while forty per cent of the boys felt a sense of unsafety. Fortunately, the young people who perceived unsafety had a high chance of filing negative reports regarding their various aspects of life, such as how they related with the staff. This is in addition to the fact that children are entitled to human care and treatment. Therefore, the trend recorded in the statistics portrayed an active trend of young people under 18 years reporting all forms of treatment from staff members and fellows. Such a trend revealed the gap in the reporting, inviting suggestions for strategies to aid the young people to feel safer whilst addressing various issues. Comparatively, there was a deep or sharp contrast regarding reporting of the manner the staff treated the young people. Notably, empirical results demonstrate that on matters of treatment with respect, the young people under STCs had a very high likelihood of reporting any form of treatment compared to the STCs.
Lack of proportionality concerning the treatment of the BAME young people
The concern of various stakeholders, policy advisors, human rights, and the critical justice system has lately tilted towards the youth justice system. While appreciating the dramatic decrease in the number of young people under custody or sentence arrangements, the treatment of the young BAME people has emerged to be an emotive issue that, if not addressed, is set further to deteriorate the state of the youth justice system. This is evidenced by David Lammy’s review of the disproportionate manner that the criminal justice system was treating the young Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) (Lammy, 2017). This being a concern under the criminal justice system, the report appreciated the tremendous reduction of the way figures of yon people offending and reoffending had dramatically reduced hence a reduction in the number of the youth being placed under custody or sentence arrangements. However, such success was not realised by the Acts of nature but rather by YOTs, whose anchorage was the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998, with the core objective of reducing the higher rates of youth offending and offending reoffending with a view of unlocking such a remit. Disturbingly, despite the sharp decline in the overall data as evidenced by the report’s findings, the reverse effect has been evidenced on the side of the BAME people.
The YOTs’ objective was to stop the overall youth population regardless of skin colour and disregarding whether the young came from the majority or minority groups. Statistically, the proportion of the BAME that were first-time offenders skyrocketed from 11% in the year 2006 ending March to 19% in the same month in the year 2016. A similar trend was evidenced for the BAME that were reoffending. In Lammy’s provisional data, custody and sentencing arrangements of the BAME youth offenders from 2006-2016 rose from twenty-five to forty per cent. Despite the criminal justice system’s sluggishness to find a solution, some cases regarding good practice remain isolated. However, some sub-factors have tried to supply a rationale for the increased rate of BAME young people’s offending and reoffending, one of which regards the representation of the BAME group disproportionately. Illustratively, a snapshot of data analysed in the year 2014/15 revealed higher rates of arrest across the various ethnic groups when contrasted with the white, with the figure reflecting double for women either in black or mixed in colour and thrice the black males contrasted with the whites. Despite such disproportionate attacks to fully justify the under-18 youth people making up the youth custodial population, such demonstrates a certain degree of biases manifest in how the Youth Justice systems treat the BEAMs compared to the whites.
Moreover, other resolves consequentially influence the trend. 2014/2015 further reveals the likelihood of the BEAM people to plead guilty in a court of law compared to the white under the rationale or assumption that such plea-taking would guarantee a less harsh sentence such as community service. In other serious offences, the BEAMs seem to be driven by the thinking that admission of guilt will likely reduce the time that they will serve under a custodial arrangement by a third. The issue of plea decisions has long been recognised as a great contributing factor to the prison system’s custodial makeup. Nonetheless, plea bargains and decisions do not erase the manifest differential treatment of the whites to the Beams. Analysed sentenced data from 2015 shockingly revealed how the Crown court tended to hand the defendants of BAME descent prison sentences for offences relating to drug trafficking or selling of prohibited narcotics compared to the white. Such disturbing findings revealed such to be a trend despite considering past convictions. This is an addition to the contribution of mitigating and aggravating factors. However, the report’s acknowledgment of no statistical or research proof of the factors considered and the manifest disparities cast a shadow of doubt on the accuracy of the logic applied in reaching such finality. Nevertheless, having drawn reference from other relevant literature pts out a discriminatory treatment of the BEAMs, perhaps attributed to the harsher sentences issued to the BAMEs when contrasted to those handed to white offenders.
The reformation of BAME under 18 youth offenders is more complex and challenging, a part of which is attributed to the preferential treatment during the whole trial process. Such a mentality prevails in the custody arrangements, creating a poor relationship between the staff and BAME. BAMEs view the whole players in the criminal justice system as inherently discriminating against them and thus choose the rebellion over the reformation path. More worrying is that young BAME prisoners are less likely to be affected by mental health issues whilst under custody and unlikely to face any difficulties. The less we speak about the issues of troubled families, the better. Such behaviour is influenced by the psychology of previous experiences and cannot be solved by way of policy but by rather psychological resilience interventions. This is in addition to the fact that such instances portend manifest unmet needs (Hodgkinson et al., 2020). Ultimately, the above scenario impedes addressing the root challenges of offending and reoffending among BAME prisoners, leading to deeply entrenched disproportionality. Such is evident by the way the BAME are treated. Disturbing is the disproportional manner of outcomes that most remand outcomes are restrictive for BAME children.
In contrast, the latter outcomes are relaxed for the White ethnicity young adults who can sometimes be referred to as children. Furthermore, compared to the white children, the disposals of out-of-court for the BAME children seem to be fewer and consequently heralded by the harsh sentences handed Black children and the ironical reluctance to grant the same for white children. Such a scenario is an indica of a deeply entrenched segregation making racial equity and equality an elusive dream (Ethnic disproportionality in remand and sentencing in the youth justice system Analysis of administrative data).
Analysis of inspection reports
The young offender in prison has a right to education. Such places greater expectations on the England and Wales corrective services to advance better learning results for the people in custody and the young offenders (COMMISSION ON YOUNG LIVES, 2022). A proper readership of the Prisoners’ Education Trust, an organisation seeking to reduce children and reoffending, presents significant statistics on the need to continue imparting knowledge for the children under custody arrangements. Young people under the age of 18 years and under a custody arrangement for offending are still in need of various neuro-developmental wants. This is due to the various issues of mental health that they experience. The issues would be exacerbated in case of any disruption regarding care and the quest for education. Such disruptions would inevitably affect their cognitive ability to engage in various activities of educational orientation. Contextually, a notable statistic by PET that is worrying now more than ever lies in the poorly established educational background of the young adults who are held in custody (Prisoners’ Education Trust, 2016). These statistics revealed that 88 % of boys, i.e., around nine out of ten young boys, have been excluded from educational programs shattering their quest for education behind bars or while under custody. More worrying is that fewer than 1% of people under custody at the time of research were under care.
Damning was PET’s analysis of the current challenges that revealed rampant restraint of the children, with the organisation having noted an average of 28 restraints out of every 100 hundred children held in custody. If that is not damning enough, statistics revealed children that between the years 2011 through 2015, there were reported cases of 4350 sustained injuries while young people under 18 years were under a custody arrangement. This is in addition to the increase in the number of rates of children self-harming themselves, statistically evidenced by the 6.6 self-harm incidences being reported per hundred children, a clear manifestation that the trend is set to continue not unless there are intervening circumstances. That not being enough, incidences of assault regarding the under 18 people in custody are on the rise, with 2013-2014 projecting a continued prevalence of assault cases with a report of 100 children being held in custody. Inevitably such an atmosphere has continued to catalyse the prevalence of reoffending, which noted that 67% of the children released from custody between the age of 10-17 faced a reconviction within the same here. Such is a clear reflection of the inherent vulnerability of young people in nexus with the entrenched character underpinning their offending. In such a situation, the custodial experience and overall arrangements engender more challenges and issues, ultimately severing remnant bonds with close family members and relatives, the whole community, and consequently breeding additional trauma (Joint Thematic Inspection by HM Inspectorate of Probation and HM Inspectorate of Prisons Youth resettlement work Interim report into work in custody, 2018).
Child incarceration has remained an emotive matter and controversial, for it questions both the moral and humane faculties. The debate has gained momentum, especially after the United Nations Conventions on the child, as literature notes that the custody arrangements are against the child’s best interests (GOLDSON, 2006). Despite this, England and Wales have normalised putting persons under 18 years in custody and issue, which despite documents from the year 1999, remains a huge issue. This is in addition to the damning expose dubbed paranoma that exclusively exposed the abuse of persons under 18 under the case of the Secure Training Centres (The Howard League for Penal Reform, n.d.). The expose was a revelation calling for reviewing the best practices supporting the under-18 people in the STCs (Parker, Meek and Lewis, 2014). In espousing vide his paper, Claire Paterson noted the need to take stock of the hindrances in delivering much-needed support to children in safe and secure environments (Paterson-Young, 2022). Where things or matters have reached the peak of trauma, “there is a need for an approach to caring for the children healing from traumas experienced under custody arrangements. Luckily, the population of youth people under
Conclusion
The youth justice conundrum in England and Wales has now, more than ever, come to the fore on matters of youth justice systems, precisely young people below the age of 18 years. Custodies and custody arrangements exist to serve one purpose, which is to restrain and rehabilitate under the age of 18 offenders or re-offenders physically. This explains why there exist three distinct yet helpful custody arrangements, i.e., the secure children’s home (SCHs), young offender institutions (YOIs) or secure training centres (National Audit Office (NAO), 2022). Proper scrutiny over the skill of all these enters concludes that such arrangements purposely target persons under the age of 18 years for purposes of rehabilitation and reassimilation back to society as reformed. The Children in Custody report of 2021-22, with a specific study and analysis of young persons between 12-18, clearly defines the sharp decline in the YOIs and STCs (Sturge and Beard, 2023). With many students under custody between the ages of 15 and 18, 65% serve sentences due to their engagement in offences against a person. Disturbingly, the offences seem to be on an upward trajectory owing to the steady rise from thirty-three cent by the end of 2016 to 42% in 2021-22. In digressing from the surprising statistical figure, the major reason for the sharp decline in custody arrangements, which is a positive achievement, is attributed to the emergence of the diversion scheme and the consequent success such a scheme has realised so far (UNICEF, 2020). In a bid to transform the whole correctional services and corrective justice theory, most young people receive community sentences instead of being arraigned before a juvenile court. Coincidentally, the unprecedented covid-19 pandemic further reduced the figures of young people offending in the years 2021-22 (MH INSPECTORATE OF PRISONS, 2023).
On a positive note, the prisons remained safer with minimum violence levels. This is despite the ever-rising levels of violent incidents. Nonetheless, an effective relationship between the prisoners and staff aided in the containment of the situation (HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales Annual Report 2019–20, 2020). This, in essence, means that a good relationship between the custody or prison staff and the convicts or prisoners lowers incidences of violence.
Recommendations
The need for alternative models to a mixed youth justice system and the welfare placement of the under-18 youth purposely to ensure the safety of the young persons under the custody arrangements. SCHs remain a haven for under-18 youth with complicated wants despite taking the offenders on an either legal path. For this reason, there is a need to approach lone SCHs-only welfare, for it is likely to increase the young juveniles’ concentration with very complicated wants that most families might have difficulty managing (Hart and Valle, 2021). Furthermore, the government of England and Wales should declare the use of tasers illegal, especially for youth under the age of eighteen years. This also ensures that the custodial staff does not mistreat the youth. There is also a need to ensure that young people have a solicitor representative. The same shall be compounded by more research geared towards a better understanding of BAME with the exclusion of care-experienced and school-excluded persons under 18. It would, however, be a grave injustice if the issue of disproportionality against the BAME is not investigated. A fair and acceptable youth justice system is what England and Wales want for efficacy and justice.
