England’s Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, has called for the immediate closure of all young offender institutions (YOIs), warning that youth custody has become a ‘holding pen’ for children failed by the state rather than a tool for justice.
De Souza’s report published earlier this week, A production line of pointlessness: Children on custodial remand, says that the current system is both morally indefensible and legally unsound. In 2023–24, 62% of children held on remand did not go on to receive a custodial sentence and 17% had their cases dismissed entirely.
Conditions in YOIs have repeatedly been condemned for their violence, lack of education provision, and failure to provide adequate mental health support. Oakhill Secure Training Centre was found by Ofsted to have ‘serious and systemic failures’, while Feltham Young Offender Institution has been described as ‘the most violent prison in the country’ for young people by the watchdog, HM Inspectorate of Prisons.
De Souza’s report also highlights the racial inequality and systemic bias within the system. In 2021–22, 56% of children remanded in custody were from Black, Asian, or mixed-ethnicity backgrounds. The report also emphasises the significant regional disparities, described as the local authority ‘postcode lottery’, in the use of remand for children. Remand practices varied greatly depending on where a child lived: one local authority used custodial remand in every case, while another used it in only 38% of cases.
The argument is that custody for many children produces harm rather than rehabilitation, disrupts education, severs ties with family and community, and entrenches vulnerabilities rather than addressing them. De Souza explains that according to the young people she has spoken to, ‘their time in the secure estate exacerbates the disadvantage they face rather than addressing them’. The report warns that a ‘vacuum’ in essential services such as social care, housing and education reflects a wider retreat from society’s moral duty, leaving vulnerable children unsupported and more likely to be drawn into inappropriate use of custody.
The report argues for a complete reform of the system and insists that ‘we can’t keep patching up a system that was never designed to care for children’. Recommendations in the report include movement within youth justice towards secure, small-scale, therapeutic alternatives to YOIs such as environments focused on rehabilitation, education, and mental health support rather than punishment. These would be led by the Department for Education (DfE) and NHS England. The Commissioner also recommends a major expansion of specialist remand foster care, alongside increased high-needs accommodation and emergency placements, so that children are not placed in custody simply because there is nowhere else for them to live.
