Remands are back on the agenda, in a good way. The government has committed to reducing the number of children remanded to custody by 25%, in its youth justice white paper published last week. We welcome this commitment and will work with the MOJ and others to achieve it.  

A new report published today by the prison’s inspectorate offers food for thought on how to get started. The report asks why children are remanded to custody only to be released on bail a few days later. Short remands make up a small but significant proportion of total remands. Data we obtained by FOI request show 15% of remands end within seven days and 21% end within two weeks. 

Many short remands end with the child being released, indicating the issue is coordination and timing rather than the child being too dangerous to be at liberty. Chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor writes in the report’s foreword: “In most cases custodial remand might have been avoided if youth justice services (YJS) were informed earlier, if community services were better coordinated, and if there was more clarity between the courts and YJS about the key components of a robust bail package.” In short, agencies currently can’t (or don’t) get their acts together in time. As a result children are warehoused in custody for a week or so while a bail package is put together that will satisfy the court.

This is troubling because even short remands are terrible for a child. They’re traumatic and expose children to violence: the report mentions one child who described watching through their window as another child was stabbed. Nothing useful happens to the child while held on remand: none of the children in the inspectorate’s review received any support or education. Short remands are also disruptive for the overall prison environment. At Feltham, the Youth Offending Institution with the highest population of children on remand, the “population was more transient and unstable as a result, impacting education and other service delivery.” HMI Prison’s most recent inspection of Feltham also found high levels of violence, another impact of this instability.

The report points to two areas where better communication with the youth justice service would help reduce short remands.

Firstly, youth justice services don’t find out early enough that a child has been arrested or charged by the police. The first they hear about it might be when the child arrives in court. It’s difficult to muster up a convincing bail package with only a couple of hours’ notice, so the youth justice service might not submit one at all or submit one with patchy information. The court remands the child in custody until the information gaps can be filled and a more detailed bail package put forward. 

Youth justice service communication with the police could be improved. The police could also remand fewer children. When the police remand a child they have charged, the child is detained overnight and produced at court the next day. This puts time pressure on everyone to produce a bail package quickly. Some youth justice services have staff in police custody so that they know immediately when a child is charged and can start exploring options for bail. But that time pressure wouldn’t exist if the police bailed the child to appear at the next youth court. 

The prison inspectorate also highlights poor communication between the judiciary and youth justice services as a driver of short remands. Youth justice services often believe the bail package they present is good enough to safely manage the child in the community, but struggle to convince the court of this. The judiciary also doesn’t always offer feedback or ideas for compromise on the bail packages put forward. There is a frustrating story in the report of a court who remands a child after refusing a bail package involving electronic tagging and five supervisions a week, only to grant bail a week later with an almost identical bail package but with two extra supervisions. If the judge had suggested this in the first place the child’s week on remand could have been avoided. 

Youth justice services need a consistent presence in court so that they build relationships with local judges and magistrates who will then trust their judgement. I have met some impressive youth justice service court staff who have been working in the same court for many years and knew the ins and outs of the local judiciary. They rarely had a situation where the judiciary disagreed with their assessment of the risks surrounding a child. This includes having a regular presence in Saturday courts. Youth justice services could also pre-emptively engage with magistrates and judges through training, court user groups or regular meetings. Greater Manchester have done good work building judicial awareness of how their youth justice services can keep children safe in the community. 

This is not an unsolvable problem – with enough resources and the right incentives it could be fixed. 

In the meantime prison shouldn’t be the fallback for children, where they are warehoused until a better solution is reached. For those children where a solution can’t be found on the day, could the child be placed in a secure local authority bed for an extra night while the courts await more information? This would be better than the trauma of going to prison. 

If you want to hear more about the HMI Prisons research, listen to Transform Justice’s new podcast episode with Angus Jones from the inspectorate.