Major research-based review reveals failings of child imprisonment reforms

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A prison cell with text that reads 'Why Child Imprisonment is Beyond Reform - August 2024'

University of Liverpool researcher contributes to comprehensive research-based review, published 12 August 2024, which exposes systemic failures in attempts to reform child imprisonment in England over the last 25 years. The review, ‘Why Child Imprisonment is Beyond Reform: A Review of the Evidence’, examines reforms since the implementation of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

Targeted primarily at government ministers, civil servants, and policymakers involved in youth justice and child welfare, the review concludes that efforts to reform child imprisonment have consistently failed.

Recommendations call for immediate government action, including the removal of children from the prison estate, the closure of child prisons, and the establishment of an independent inquiry to explore alternatives to child imprisonment. Additionally, it urges the publication of a national strategy to expedite the closure of child prisons, with secure childcare establishments reserved solely for cases where no other option can prevent serious and immediate harm.

The review’s recommendations have been endorsed by leading human rights and youth justice agencies, including Alliance for Youth Justice; Article 39; the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies; Child Rights International Network (CRIN); Howard League for Penal Reform; INQUEST; Just for Kids Law, and National Association for Youth Justice, together with many other children’s human rights and child justice experts.

Professor Emeritus Barry Goldson, Department of Sociology, Social Policy, and Criminology, and one of the principal contributors to the review, commented:
“For almost two hundred years children have been imprisoned in a range of specialist institutions. The national and international evidence has persistently pointed to the myriad failings of such institutions. Child imprisonment is typically harmful, spectacularly ineffective as a means of providing community safety, and extraordinarily expensive. It fails its young captives, and it fails the wider public interest. The time has come to end such abject failure by heeding the evidence and closing child prisons”.

The review is the most recent publication to derive from the ‘End Child Imprisonment’ campaign, an initiative co-ordinated by Article 39, a national charity that advances the human rights of children.

The full review will first be sent to government ministers, civil servants, and advisers, and a summary report will be sent to Members of Parliament in September 2024. The findings are expected to reignite debate on the future of child imprisonment in England, challenging policymakers to take bold steps to end what the evidence implies is a persistently failing system.