AYJ Comment: Year after year, the Children in Custody report exposes the same failings—showing why YOIs and STCs must be closed for good.

The annual Children in Custody report, based on the perceptions of children and young people held in Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) and Secure Training Centres (STCs) and published by HMI Prisons has revealed deeply concerning conditions and outcomes for children in YOIs and STCs for successive years since 2017.

The latest report raises concerns regarding poor relationships between children and staff, few children motivated to behave well, and few children thinking the rewards and incentives scheme is fair. In the absence of effective behaviour management schemes, staff resort to keeping children apart from each other or separating them completely, and some children stay in their cells because they are scared, limiting access to education and other activities.

Racially minoritised children were less likely to think the rewards and incentives system was fair, more likely to report having been restrained or separated and less likely to report feeling cared for by staff.

It paints a picture of establishments where violence is rife, with 43% children saying they have felt unsafe at some point and 61% experiencing some form of bullying, violence or victimisation from other children.

A profoundly troubling element of the report is that 15% of children at Oakhill Secure Training Centre reported having been sexually assaulted by staff. If this alone wasn’t concerning enough, Oakhill is the only one of the six establishments covered by this report that holds girls, whose contact with the criminal justice system is frequently underpinned by experiences of violence, abuse and exploitation.

Only Parc YOI performs better with consistent daily routines, which get children out of their cells, 85% saying they felt cared for by staff, and far fewer children feeling unsafe. Yet we see little work to systematically evaluate what lies behind these differences and apply learning to other establishments.

These annual reports are a depressing catalogue of repeated failures. Year after year, they set out the unacceptable conditions and outcomes that some of the most vulnerable children in society are subjected to, with no clear, long-term plan for improvement in response. The persistent and systemic issues they highlight demonstrate a system that is fundamentally failing children.

The Ministry of Justice and Youth Custody Service must now move beyond firefighting within a failing model and instead commit to a clear strategy that truly ensures custody is a last resort.

As the Sentencing Bill makes its way through parliament in response to a crisis of capacity in the adult male estate, a rethink of the children’s sentencing framework is required in response to a crisis of safety and wellbeing in the children’s estate. By ensuring that children are only sent to custody when their risk absolutely cannot be managed in the community - and that in those cases they are cared for in small residential units, close to their homes with trauma informed staff, such as the existing Secure Children’s Homes model -  government could set out a long term plan for the phased closure of YOIs and the last remaining STC.

 Jess Mullen, Chief Executive of the Alliance for Youth Justice, said:

“These repeated findings from the Inspectorate are a damning indictment of a system that is both ineffective and unsafe. The inherent flaws of YOIs and STCs—modelled too closely on adult prisons and unable to care for the extremely vulnerable children they hold—have made these institutions a site of constant emergency. It is time for a new approach that prioritises the welfare of children and ensures they can be supported to fulfil their potential, with a clear commitment to ensure custody is only ever a last resort, paving the way for the closure of these failing institutions.”