Article 39 welcomes the government’s commitment in today’s youth justice White Paper to move away from Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) and towards smaller, therapeutic settings for children deprived of their liberty.
For years, Article 39 and our colleagues have warned that YOIs are unsafe, harmful and fundamentally incapable of meeting children’s needs. Alongside our partners in the End Child Imprisonment campaign, we wrote to Lord Chancellor David Lammy and Youth Justice Minister Jake Richards ahead of the White Paper’s publication, making clear that the test of these reforms would be whether they were ambitious enough to finally chart a path away from child imprisonment.
The government’s acknowledgement that large custodial institutions are not fit for purpose – and its commitment to publish a Youth Custody Transformation Plan setting out a transition away from them over the next ten years – is therefore significant and long overdue.
But children cannot wait another decade for change. Today’s commitment will only matter if it leads to the urgent closure of YOIs and the last remaining Secure Training Centre (STC), and to a genuinely different approach to children deprived of their liberty.
We have been promised reform of youth custody before. It is almost a decade since the previous government committed to closing YOIs and STCs, yet no plan to do so ever emerged. It is two years since we were promised a youth custody strategy which was never published. After years of warnings, reviews, inquiries and assurances, there is understandable scepticism about continued delay, and about whether the Transformation Plan that finally materialises will ultimately deliver the meaningful change children need.
Every day that passes without urgent action is another day children are exposed to violence, isolation, and inhumane conditions in institutions the government itself accepts are failing. While this White Paper was being prepared, children were still being locked in cells for excessive periods, subjected to force, denied access to education, and living in environments which raise profound concerns under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Now, they will continue to be put at risk while we await the Transformation Plan.
It is therefore concerning that the government still seems largely focused on reforming and managing YOIs in the meantime, rather than urgently accelerating their closure. The evidence is clear that child prisons are beyond reform: for more than two decades, successive governments have attempted to “improve” YOIs and STCs through repeated programmes of reform and restructuring. None has succeeded in creating environments that are safe, humane or genuinely therapeutic for children.
Today’s announcements are also a missed opportunity to ensure custody is a genuine last resort, as enshrined in domestic law and the UNCRC. We welcome the government’s commitment to cut custodial remand by 25% and to explore reducing short custodial sentences, but bolder reform is needed. Legislative criteria should be amended to ensure custody is only available for the small number of children who pose a serious risk to others that cannot safely be managed in the community.
The government must now move urgently from commitment to action. The forthcoming Youth Custody Transformation Plan must include a credible, ambitious and expedited route to closing YOIs and the last remaining STC, alongside significant investment in smaller, local, welfare-based environments designed around children’s rights, relationships, care and therapeutic support. Children have already waited far too long.
