Solitary Confinement (Children and Young People)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 1st May 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Dr Phillip Lee)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing this important debate on a difficult issue that is worthy of further discussion after today. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond.

The number of children entering the youth justice system has continued to decrease in recent years. In 2016-17, juvenile convictions and cautions were down by 83% since 2006-2007, with first-time entries down by 85% in the same period. The number of under-18s in custody also fell by 70% during that time, and in February stood at 870. That represents a success story, and everyone involved in youth justice should be pleased by those figures. However, the decline in overall numbers has resulted in a concentrated cohort of young people in the secure estate, many of whom demonstrate complex and challenging behaviour.

[Mr Lord]

I am pleased about the overall reduction but, as the Minister says, there is now a cohort of perhaps more difficult offenders. I admired the eloquence of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), but I do not think that she was able to answer my earlier question. If someone in a young offenders institution is a danger to themselves and others, what alternatives are there to removal from association?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lee]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Staff in young offenders institutions up and down the country are sometimes confronted with extremely difficult circumstances, with particularly troubled and violent young people. We have introduced an enhanced support unit at Feltham, and we are hoping to bring another on-stream elsewhere. We have found that the use of such units, where there is a higher staff-to-offender ratio, has worked in managing behaviour. Ultimately, the removal from association of a troublesome, very difficult young person is often the only course of action that a responsible governor can take.

The safety and welfare of children held in custody is one of my highest priorities. The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston alluded to the fact that there are definitions of solitary confinement internationally, but there is not a sole definition. There are the Mandela rules, the Istanbul convention and a variety of others, but there is not one clear definition, but I would like to be clear from the outset that I have been assured that young people are never subject to solitary confinement in this country. When a child in custody is putting themselves or others at risk, segregation can be used as a last resort for limited periods of time and under regular review, when no other form of intervention is suitable to protect both the child and others. Segregation should never be used as a punishment for young people.

When a young person is removed from association, they will be given as much access as possible to the usual regime, including education and healthcare. That is monitored on a regular basis by the youth offenders institute and the independent monitoring board, in order to protect the young person.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I welcome the Minister’s statement that solitary confinement is a last resort, but a very high number of young people and children in the criminal justice system have one or more mental health illnesses, learning disabilities, ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, addiction and probably other conditions. Once those children are being punished in the criminal justice system, surely they need proper specialist medical care therapy, as happens in most other countries.

[Dr Lee]

I acknowledge that the youth justice population has an over-representation of the issues that the hon. Lady has just outlined, although the diagnosis of each of those is broad and, in and of itself, not straightforward. I know that the appropriate care is made available to individuals who particularly need psychiatric input. I look at that on a regular basis, and I personally see it as my responsibility to ensure that that is the case. If the hon. Lady would like to write to me with evidence of where that is not the case, I would be more than happy to receive such a letter.

At an absolute minimum, young people in segregation in young offenders institutions will be given time in the open air, outreach education provision, healthcare, physical education and access to legal advice. Individual regime plans are agreed for each young person by a multi-disciplinary team, taking account of all those issues and any other relevant information. They are reviewed frequently on an individual basis—again, in the interest of the young person. All under-18 young offenders institutions have been given additional training on the use of segregation and the rules governing it.

I note with interest the recent inspection report from the independent monitoring board for Feltham YOI, which is of course located in the constituency of the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston. The report noted that significant improvements have been made in addressing violence and praised the dedication and commitment of staff within the establishment. I take this opportunity to reiterate my thanks to staff at Feltham and across the youth secure estate for their continued hard work in looking after the young people in their care.

The report also noted, however, that too frequently staffing levels within the establishment affected the daily regime and the ability to provide sufficient purposeful activity and time out of room. I share those concerns and am encouraged that, across both sites at Feltham, recruitment is swiftly improving. As of the end of March, there were 105 prison officers booked on to entry-level training. I believe that every child and young person should have access to and be engaged in meaningful activities, including education and physical activities. The regime should be purposeful, meet the needs of the cohort, keep young people occupied and active all day and deliver the highest quality education. That needs to sit alongside effective behaviour management, so that young people can be out of their rooms and able to participate safely in the regimes and activities provided.

That is why we have developed a new approach to behaviour management, which includes the roll-out of the custody support plan, to provide each young person with a personalised officer to work with on a weekly basis in order to build trust and consistency. We are also implementing a conflict resolution strategy, applying restorative justice principles to help resolve conflict. However, while acknowledging the work that is continuing to be progressed to address safety in youth custody, as demonstrated in the latest inspection reports from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons for Werrington and Parc young offenders institutions, I am clear that levels of violence within the youth estate are too great, which is why we are reforming youth custody to reduce violence and improve outcomes for young people.

Investing in our workforce is a cornerstone of those reforms. We continue to be impressed by the dedication and pride that our staff show in their work with young people, as evidenced by the fact that more than 200 frontline staff have voluntarily enrolled on a youth justice foundation degree funded by the Ministry of Justice. We want to build on that success and ensure that working in youth justice continues to be seen as the respected and rewarding profession that it is.

We know that many establishments have struggled with staffing, especially in the south-east, which is why we are increasing frontline capacity in public sector young offenders institutions by bringing in more than 100 new recruits and introducing a new youth justice specialist role. We have started recruitment for those additional frontline posts in order to relieve the immediate operational pressures, alongside additional psychology roles in the YOIs. In addition, we are developing a bespoke recruitment campaign and process for the youth custody service, to target those with a passion to work with young people. The first phase of this—a new website and targeted marketing material—was launched last week.

We will develop strong leaders, building the workforce required to create a therapeutic and aspirational culture in our establishments. Our reforms will empower the leaders, giving them the freedom to deliver the right suite of services to meet the needs of the young people in their care. We are working closely with NHS England to implement Secure STAIRS, a framework for integrated care in the youth secure estate, which aims to co-ordinate the services of health and non-health providers into a coherent package, supporting trauma-informed care and a whole-system approach.

I am a strong believer in the benefit that sport and physical activity can provide to children in custody. As well as the obvious health benefits, it can provide young people with a sense of achievement, enhancing self-esteem and transforming lives. For those reasons, I commissioned Professor Rosie Meek of Royal Holloway, University of London to conduct an independent review into the role of sport in the justice system, to identify best practice and make recommendations for improvement. Professor Meek’s report will be published shortly and I await its findings with interest.

We are also looking to support organisations that want to work with young people in the youth justice system and seek opportunities to build on existing collaborations between establishments, sports clubs and providers. For example, Saracens rugby club’s Get Onside programme, which runs at Feltham for young adults, is a shining example of how sport can engage young people. The young adults who have been through this 10-week programme, which uses the ethos of rugby to teach skills such as leadership and teamwork, have shown notably lower rates of reoffending than their peers. That is just one example of how sport can help young people lead a better, more productive life, away from crime.

Finally, we continue to work on our proposal to develop secure schools. Our model will be informed by best practice from outstanding alternative provision schools, and secure schools will be set up, run and managed in a similar way to free schools.

[Mr Lord]

I am encouraged by a lot of what the Minister has said and I urge him to keep up the good work in his Department and with these institutions. Does he agree that, given that solitary confinement has a clear definition in this space, and no young people are subject to solitary confinement in the UK, that pejorative phrase should not be used in such debates? Where removal from association is used as a last resort, we obviously urge that those young people benefit in the future from the sort of regime that the Minister is outlining.

[Dr Lee]

Yes, it is always important to use language appropriately. As I tried to point out at the start, use of the term is difficult when internationally no clear definition is agreed upon. The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston can be assured that I look at this issue all the time. I cannot talk about individual cases, because one is still running with the courts, but we consider the issue all the time. There have been other cases where difficult decisions have to be made. I am assured that at all times we are thinking about the child at the centre of the case, and the children being held with the child who is showing such troubling behaviour.

Secure schools will be operated on a not-for-profit basis by child-focused providers with strong leaders who will have the freedom to provide integrated services based on individual need, with education and healthcare and, if I get my way, sport at its heart.

I am under no illusions about the challenge we face. We are talking about some of the most challenging, often damaged young people in the country. However, our reforms will support establishments to provide better levels of care and enable more young people to engage in purposeful activities, outside their rooms, and work towards a brighter future.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston on her speech, and thank my hon. Friends the Members for Henley (John Howell) and for Woking (Mr Lord) and the hon. Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for their contributions. I will take away the points about the collection of data and the numbers of children who could be affected in this way, and I will be happy to receive any correspondence on the issue from any parliamentary colleague.

Question put and agreed to.