AYJ Policy Manager Millie Harris reflects on damning UNCRC report
In a damning report on the UK’s performance on it’s international obligations on children’s rights, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has called out the Government for a lack of progress on youth justice. The Committee is “deeply concerned” about the “draconian and punitive” youth justice system that is out of line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), making a number of recommendations aimed at addressing the injustices children in contact with the justice system face every day. Millie Harris, AYJ Policy Manager, reflects on the Concluding Observations.
Sadly but unsurprisingly, the recommendations demonstrate not just inaction since the UK was last examined 7 years ago, but a number of growing threats to children’s rights. It is clear from the increasing number of recommendations and stern words in the report that the Committee is increasingly worried about violence and abuse against children at the hands of the State, including by the police and in secure settings, as well as racism and discrimination across society.
Almost all of the 2016 recommendations on policing and justice have not been addressed and are reiterated in the 2023 report, including critically that the government must raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14, ensure detention in custody is a last resort and for the shortest possible period of time, end life imprisonment and solitary confinement, and ban police from using harmful devices like tasers and spit hoods on children. Another examination cycle cannot go by without these crucial reforms put in place.
“Sadly but unsurprisingly, the recommendations demonstrate not just inaction since the UK was last examined 7 years ago, but a number of growing threats to children’s rights.”
In a number of areas the recommendations now go further to prevent children being unnecessarily harmed by the justice system. Significantly, the Committee calls for the strip searching of children to be banned, for police officers to be removed from schools, and for police remand and overnight detention in police cells to end. Recognising that children in the justice system are so often victims, it is welcome the Committee wants to see the Victims Bill currently going through Parliament create a clear definition of child criminal exploitation.
The Committee is right to be concerned about our excessively harsh and racially disproportionate youth justice system. Children’s vulnerabilities are increasing, alarm bells are ringing about risks of exploitation, and with 20,000 extra police on the streets at a time when support services are under severe pressure, a growing number of children may come into contact with the justice system.
Without urgent action to address the encroachment of police in children’s lives, reform policing practices and remove powers that harass, abuse and traumatise children, more children - particularly Black and working class children in overpoliced communities - will be criminalised. Many children already feel police are untrustworthy, and recent tragedies and scandals such as the murder of Sarah Everard, the strip search case of Child Q, and the Baroness Casey review finding the Metropolitan Police to be institutionally racist, sexist, and homophobic, have only heightened tensions which the Committee’s recommendations could go some way to address.
Rather than take action to reduce detention to a last resort, the government has taken a punitive turn in recent legislation - namely the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 - towards increasing the use and length of custody for children. The government expects the number of children in custody to more than double in coming years, yet instead of doing everything in its power to prevent that prediction becoming a reality, there is a complete absence of a clear vision or ambition for children in custody. Without this, the secure estate lurches from one crisis to another – the Urgent Notification issued last month regarding Cookham Wood Young Offenders Institution was the fifth for the children’s estate in just four years. The estate is already failing to keep children safe and seeing children held in prolonged solitary confinement, entirely at odds with the UNCRC. How will it cope if the number of children in custody increases? A national strategy for the future estate is urgently needed, and the legislative threshold for sending a child to custody must be made higher.
“The government expects the number of children in custody to more than double in coming years, yet instead of doing everything in its power to prevent that prediction becoming a reality, there is a complete absence of a clear vision or ambition for children in custody. ”
Black and racially minoritised children are marginalised, more likely to be arrested, less likely to be diverted, and are therefore disproportionately likely to end up in the criminal justice system. They are more likely to be remanded to custody and to receive harsher sentences. The Committee’s call for targeted policies to combat racism must be taken deadly seriously, as must its recommendation to develop measures to prevent racial profiling by law enforcement. There can be no justice without racial justice, yet over five years since the Lammy Review highlighted racial inequality in the youth justice system as its ‘biggest concern’ and called for a new requirement to ‘explain or reform’ racial disparities, inequalities have worsened and injustices persist. At every stage of the justice system there is a critical need to employ this rule.
The Committee shows a clear and welcome understanding of the underlying causes of children coming into contact with the justice system and the need to avoid it and punitive responses at all costs. An understanding that must be adopted and reflected in government policy. The solutions to problems highlighted in the UN report lie across multiple government departments and ministerial briefs. A senior Cabinet level minister with responsibility for children’s rights must be appointed, to create a child rights action plan and drive the progress that has been so lacking for children in, or at risk of involvement in, the youth justice system.