News

Frances Crook argues that only an independent view can truly protect young people remanded in prison.

The scheme to rescue children from prison set up by the Howard League and developed nationally by the Children's Society is being closed down by the Youth Justice Board. In the early 1990s when there was only a handful of 15-year-olds in prisons, the Howard League created the Troubleshooter Project to challenge unnecessary remands and sentences and to give independent support to boys sent to Feltham young offenders institution.

In 1997, the Children's Society took over and extended the work to concentrate on the 15 to 17-year-old boys and 17-year-old girls remanded to prison, building on repeated government promises to end the use of prisons for these children. From this summer, the work will be handed over to youth offending teams, comprising people from statutory services, including police officers.

From 1993 to 1996 the Howard League helped more than 800 boys aged 15 who were sent to Feltham. Fifty-eight per cent of our remanded clients spent up to three months in Feltham but were eventually acquitted, discharged or given a community sentence. Five teenagers had taken their own lives in Feltham, but for the four years that the Howard League staff worked with the younger boys there were no suicides.

The independence of staff was critical. The boys were meant to have personal officers assigned to them, but there is a contradiction in a prison officer who both imposes discipline and punishment, being asked to befriend a boy in the prison. The boys on remand do not trust the prison officers. The role of voluntary workers inside prisons is essential - it can even save lives.

The Children's Society extended the work nationally to prisons holding juveniles on remand. The rate of remands dropped. But now that the Youth Justice Board has stopped the funding, redundancy notices are being issued to the 30 or so Children's Society staff.

The whole point of this work with child prisoners is to challenge the legal and professional routes that allow them to go into prison, sometimes exposing the failure of those very services that now will be expected to take over the rescuing and supportive role.

It is only outsiders who can provide truly independent scrutiny. The Youth Justice Board has done some innovative work in developing community sanctions for children and criticising the overuse of prison sentences, but this is one time it has got it badly wrong.

Frances Crook is director of the Howard League of Penal Reform.