Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many children in young offender institutions were locked in their cells for (a) 22 hours a day and (b) more than 22 hours a day in each of the last 5 years.

The safety and welfare of young people held in custody is one of our highest priorities and is fundamental to the proper functioning of our justice system. We are committed to reforming youth custody so that it is safer for both young people and staff, as well as being better equipped to help young people turn their lives around.

There are some occasions when young people in custody are putting themselves or others at risk, during which segregation can be used as a last resort for limited periods of time when no other form of intervention is suitable. Any decision to remove a young person from association is subject to regular review and a range of safeguarding measures are in place to ensure appropriate oversight of their care. There are careful limits placed on the length of time for which young people can be removed from association without review of the decision to remove.

Please see the number of hours of segregation that young people have been placed on, broken down via each Young Offender Institute (YOI) within each of the past five years. Please note that the data collected below is classified by the number of hours young people in total have been on segregation in each current YOI establishment. We do not have a breakdown via the number of young people that have been in segregation and nor the number of hours spent per segregation.

Notes

• This is unpublished data that is not in the public domain.
• 2018 figures only apply to the months from January to March 2018.
• We have not included data for HMYOI Ashfield, HMYOI Hindley and HMYOI Warren Hill. These establishments also held young people at times during the period requested but were all decommissioned.
• The data from HMYOI Parc is not comparable as it relates to single separation data – not time on segregation.
• This data includes some 18 year olds who remain in the under 18 secure estate.
• These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing and can be subject to change over time.