Communities and Culture Committee Youth Justice
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Communities and Culture Committee Youth Justice: The experience of Welsh children in the Secure Estate February 2010 The National Assembly for Wales is the democratically elected body that represents the interests of Wales and its people, makes laws for Wales and holds the Welsh Government to account. An electronic copy of this report can be found on the National Assembly’s website www.assemblywales.org Further hard copies of this document can be obtained from: The Communities and Culture Committee National Assembly for Wales Cardiff Bay CF99 1NA Tel: 029 2089 8149 Fax: 029 2089 8021 Email: [email protected] Communities and Culture Committee Youth Justice: The experience of Welsh children in the Secure Estate February 2010 Communities and Culture Committee The main function of scrutiny committees is to examine within their remit the expenditure, administration and policy of the government and associated public bodies. The Committee’s remit covers: – Housing; – Community Safety; – Community Inclusion including Communities First and the Spatial Plan; – Welsh Language, sport and culture. Powers The Committee was established on 26.6.07 as one of the Assembly’s scrutiny committees. Its powers are set out in the National Assembly for Wales’ Standing Orders, particularly SO 12. These are available at www.assemblywales.org Committee Membership Sandy Mewies (Chair) Labour Delyn Mohammad Asghar Eleanor Burnham Alun Davies Welsh Conservative Party Welsh Liberal Democrats Labour South Wales East North Wales Mid and West Wales Mark Isherwood Bethan Jenkins Dai Lloyd Welsh Conservative Party Plaid Cymru Plaid Cymru North Wales South Wales West South Wales West Lynne Neagle Joyce Watson Labour Labour Torfaen Mid and West Wales 4 Contents Chair’s foreword......................................................................................................... 7 The Committee’s Recommendations ............................................................... 8 Introduction............................................................................................................... 13 Terms of Reference........................................................................ 14 Why did we want to look at the experiences of children in the secure estate? ........................................................................................... 14 Background................................................................................................................ 17 Secure Estate for Children and Young People ................................. 17 Legislative developments............................................................... 19 Key UK policy developments .......................................................... 23 Welsh policy developments ............................................................ 27 Key issues................................................................................................................... 32 1. Devolution of the secure estate to Wales .......................................... 34 2. Preventing Young People Offending .................................................... 39 3. Use of custody ................................................................................................. 42 Consistency over use of custody.................................................... 43 Youth Courts ................................................................................. 46 Use of short term custodial sentences ........................................... 48 Remands to custody ...................................................................... 49 Transporting children between court and the secure estate ........... 50 Raising the age of criminal responsibility....................................... 51 4. Alternatives to Custody .............................................................................. 53 Working with offenders’ families.................................................... 57 Value of integrating programmes .................................................. 59 Funding ......................................................................................... 60 5. Existing provision of secure estate placements in Wales.......... 62 Increasing Juvenile provision in Wales............................................ 65 Existing juvenile provision in Wales ............................................... 69 Provision of custody for Young Offenders (18-21 years olds) ......... 71 55 6. Specific Issues within the Secure Estate............................................. 74 The safeguarding agenda .............................................................. 74 Communication between local authorities and the secure estate.... 74 The Placement Process .................................................................. 77 Prison healthcare ........................................................................... 77 Mental health................................................................................. 79 Substance Misuse .......................................................................... 83 Education and Training.................................................................. 83 Advocacy services within the secure estate .................................... 95 Social worker posts in the juvenile secure estate............................ 96 7. Additional support for specific groups children and young people in the secure estate ............................................................................... 98 Speakers of Welsh and other languages ......................................... 98 Speech, language and communication difficulties .......................... 99 Girls and young women ............................................................... 101 Children detained on welfare grounds ......................................... 102 8. Staff training...................................................................................................104 9. Resettlement and Aftercare ....................................................................108 Feedback on re-offending ............................................................ 108 Communication in relation to release and resettlement ............... 110 Specific resettlement issues......................................................... 116 Witnesses..................................................................................................................122 List of written evidence.....................................................................................126 66 Chair’s foreword Improving the Youth Justice System and the experiences of Welsh children in the secure estate is in all our interests. Justice systems can have many purposes, including punishment, deterrence against others committing crimes, incapacitation of potential threats to the public, and rehabilitation of individuals. Throughout the course of this inquiry the Communities and Culture Committee has been mindful that victims should be at the top of our agenda, but that victims do not want the crimes that have occurred to them to happen again. A key role of the youth justice system must therefore be to prevent future offending. With this in mind, we consider that there is much to welcome in the Welsh Government's rights-based approach to developing policies for children and young people, based around the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Indeed, we have recommended that the Welsh Government should consider seeking to have devolved responsibility for the juvenile secure estate, and that the Welsh Government considers the evidence presented in this report as part of its review of whether the responsibility for the youth justice system should be devolved to the Welsh Ministers. However, recognising that this is a complex political debate, we have also set out a number of practical steps that we believe this Welsh Government can undertake, within its existing devolved responsibilities, to start affecting positive change on the experiences of Welsh children in the secure estate. Having joined the Committee at the close of this inquiry, I would like to thank and pay tribute to the work of Janice Gregory AM for her work in developing this committee, and her skilful chairing of this inquiry. On behalf of Janice and myself, I would also like to thank all the former and present Members of the Communities and Culture Committee for their personal commitment to this inquiry, in which we have sometimes had to recognise and reconsider our preconceptions of the experiences of Welsh children in the secure estate. Indeed, one Committee member notably remarked, after a visit to a Secure Children's Home that: "I thought that we might have seen some streetwise young kids who knew the system and could work the system, but they were far more vulnerable than I had ever appreciated or thought that they might be." Finally, on behalf of the Committee, I would also like to offer my thanks to all those individuals and organisations who gave us the benefit of their experience and advice in formal committee meetings, during visits, or by responding to our call for evidence, and whose expertise greatly helped us in our deliberations. 77 The Committee’s Recommendations The Committee’s recommendations to the Welsh Government are listed below, in the order that they appear in this Report. Please refer to the relevant pages of the report to see the supporting evidence and conclusions: Recommendation 1. We recommend that the Welsh Government