AYJ Comment: Treating children’s custody as an overflow for adult prisons is a dangerous mistake
The government has announced plans to hold 18-year-olds for longer in the children’s secure estate, potentially until their 19th birthday, to ease capacity pressures across the adult prison system.
Under the proposals, ministers plan to introduce a cap ensuring young adults make up no more than 25 per cent of the youth custody population. However this policy risks destabilising an already fragile youth secure estate and compromising the safety of vulnerable children.
A similar policy introduced by the Ministry of Justice in November 2022 saw the number of young adults in youth custody surge from 49 to 173 within eight months – a 253 per cent increase – resulting in over 18s comprising 28 per cent of the youth estate. That measure was ended early following an internal Ministry of Justice (MoJ) review and work by the Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ) which raised serious concerns about establishments ability to cope with the children already in their care plus the impact of having nearly a third of the estate populated by young adults.
The AYJ report, Adultifying Youth Custody, revealed that under the previous policy establishments were unable to meet the distinct needs of young adults while children experienced heightened risks, reduced time out of cell, and severely diminished support.
Inspectorates continue to report extreme levels of violence, excessive time locked in cells, and chronic staff shortages. Introducing more young adults into this environment will only exacerbate these harms, and distract from the urgent work needed to improve safety, care, and access to education for children.
Jess Mullen, Chief Executive Officer of the Alliance for Youth Justice, said:
"Using the children’s estate as an overflow for adult prisons is a dangerous sticking plaster that repeats past mistakes. Even with a 25 per cent cap, having one in four places occupied by young adults is a major shift in population for an estate that the government’s own white paper admits is already failing to meet children’s needs and is not fit for purpose.
"Treating youth custody as an emergency buffer shows exactly why responsibility for vulnerable children should not sit within the Ministry of Justice, where their welfare doesn't come first because the system is focused on adult men. Children in contact with the law should be the responsibility of a department for children, or the existing Department for Education, where they can finally be treated as children first.
"The government has committed to publishing a youth custody transformation plan this autumn, but any genuine efforts to reform the estate are severely undermined by this decision. Our priority must be ensuring custody is used only as a last resort, for the shortest possible time, in trauma-informed, rights-respecting settings—closing failing Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) in favour of small, welfare-based units. Diverting adult pressures into the youth estate will actively hamper efforts to improve conditions, leaving vulnerable children trapped in unsafe, struggling establishments."
The announcement comes at a time when levels of violence in YOIs remain exceptionally high and recent decisions, such as extending the authorisation of PAVA spray, underscore systemic struggles with behaviour management and a lack of trauma-informed care.