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19 NOVEMBER 2008
NO 1375
Secure accommodation
The changes in criminal justice policy and legislation and child welfare policy which began in 1992 and have continued to gather momentum since 1997, have resulted in soaring numbers of children and young people in custody (Warner 2001), with the sharpest increases among girls and children under 15, and a widening of the net of those likely to be locked up. Commentators have long argued that `improvements in the quality of residential care should considerably reduce the levels of need for secure accommodation' (Millham and others 1978:52) but the contraction of residential care for young people in the same period has resulted in fewer and less specialized homes, with little opportunity explicitly to match and address the needs of those placed in them. Cawson and Martell (1979:145) noted that the expansion of secure accommodation served to 'generate demand', with the need for it justified on the basis of its use rather than its value or effectiveness and Millham and others (1978:45) described it primarily as `a safety valve for the system' of residential child care, with the demand for its use associated with the inadequacy or unavailability of community placements rather than the needs of 'difficult' children.
Secure accommodation as it is currently constituted contains a mixed population of children admitted under Children Act 1989 because they are `in need of protection', unconvicted children on remand and children convicted of a range of offences, spanning the age range 10 – 18 years, and most units accommodate both boys and girls. Children convicted of certain grave crimes sentenced to long term detention, and those sentenced to Detention and Training Orders (Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000) will serve, or commence their sentences, in secure accommodation if they are female, under 16 or considered to be vulnerable. This practice violates international standards which provide that `accused persons shall, save in exceptional circumstances be segregated from convicted persons and shall be subject to separate treatment appropriate to their status as unconvicted persons' (International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights) and Rule 17, UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty which states that `untried detainees should be separated from convicted juveniles'. Furthermore the Committee on the Rights of the Child has strongly criticised the mixing of unconvicted and convicted children in closed institutions in other countries (Children's Legal Centre 2006).
In the UK, this practice is justified on the basis that all these young people will, in all probability have experienced adversity and disadvantage (Boswell 1996, O'Neill 2001) and those admitted through the criminal justice routes are vulnerable and as much `children in need' as those admitted 'for their own protection' (Goldson 2002). However, not only is the practice illegal, but the justification for it is based almost entirely on the similarities in the children's backgrounds and histories and is therefore too simplistic. In the light of evidence of the importance of differentiation between young people and the need for `disaggregation of the population' (Bullock et al., 1998), a more complex analysis is required which recognises the similarities but also takes account of the important differences in their presenting difficulties, reasons for admission to secure accommodation and in the risk factors, problems, needs, `career route' and likely outcomes, in addition to age, ethnicity and gender (Hodgkin 1995, Howard League 1995, Timms 1995, Brogi and Bagley 1998, Farmer and Pollock 1998, O'Neill 2001, Lees 2002).
TERESA O'NEILL
O'Neill, T. (2006). Children 'at risk' in secure
accommodation. International Journal of Child and Family Welfare, 9,
4. pp.239-240.
REFERENCES
Boswell, G. (1996). Young and Dangerous. The backgrounds and careers of section 53 offenders, Aldershot: Avebury.
Brogi, L. and Bagley, C. (1998). Abusing Victims: Detention of Child Sexual Abuse ictims in Secure Accommodation. Child Abuse Review, 5. pp.123-127.
Bullock, R., Little, M. and Millham, S. (1998). Secure Treatment Outcomes: The care careers of very difficult adolescents, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Cawson, P. and Martell, M. (1979). Children Referred to Closed Units, London: HMSO.
Children's Legal Centre (2006). Secure Care Consultation: Comment from the Children's Legal Centre, ChildRight, 12.
Farmer, E. and POLLOCK, S. (1998). Sexually Abused and Abusing Children in Substitute Care, Chichester: John Wiley.
Goldson, B. (2002). Vulnerable Inside: Children in Secure and Penal Settings. London. The Children's Society.
Hodgkin, R. (1995). Safe to Let Out? The current and future use of secure accommodation for children and young people, London: National Children's Bureau.
Howard League. (1995). Banged Up, Beaten Up, Cutting Up: Report of the Howard League Commission of Inquiry into Violence in Penal Institutions for Young People, London: Howard League.
Lees, S. (2002). Gender, Ethnicity and Vulnerability in Young Women in Local Authority Care. British Journal of Social Work, 32. pp. 907-922.
Millham, S., Bullock, R. and Hosie, K. (1978). Locking Up Children: Secure Provision within the Child Care System, Farnborough: Saxon House.
O'Neill, T. (2001). Children in Secure Accommodation: A Gendered Exploration of Locked Institutional Care for Children in Trouble, London: Jessica Kingsley.
Warner, N. (2001). Sentencing Juveniles to Custody, London: Youth Justice Board.
