Blog: Why teenage girls should not be held in children’s prisons

News broke on 5 March that a teenage girl had been restrained and strip searched by male officers at the Keppel Unit at HMYOI Wetherby on consecutive nights last autumn. It triggered immediate calls for girls to be removed from our children’s prisons, and accommodated instead in the country’s last remaining Secure Training Centre and 14 Secure Children’s Homes.

Three days later Ed Cornmell, the Youth Custody Service’s (YCS) Executive Director, issued a letter that attempted to provide reassurance about the specific incidents. It explained there had been a serious risk of self-harm by the child and that in order to mitigate this she needed to be stripped and placed in anti-ligature clothing.

The prison service had conducted a full “learning review”; lessons had been learnt; and the incidents were entirely exceptional. I hope that one of the issues this internal review has addressed is—how come a girls’ unit can be staffed by men? Why was the staffing of this unit so male dominated that no female could be found anywhere on the first night—and only one was available on the second?

Whatever reassurances are on offer now, his letter fails to address the central question— should teenage girls be held in prisons—especially one holding boys’?

There are very few girls in custody these days. I was Chief Executive of the Youth Justice Board in 2009 when we re-established the programmes to use custody for children only as a last resort. At that time there could be 200 girls in custody on a given night. But on the nights of these searches in 2023 there were just seven girls in custody in the whole country—three of whom were apparently held at Wetherby. On those same nights there were probably 20 empty and already paid for beds available in the Secure Children’s Homes and Oakhill Secure Training Centre—not to mention potential accommodation within the NHS.

So why are we placing a very small number of girls, acknowledged by the YCS as being “at very high risk of serious harm”, in boys’ prisons? The history of imprisoning girls with boys is instructive. A small number of girls were first moved into the Keppel Unit—a specialist unit for up to 48 boys located alongside the main prison at Wetherby—in June 2021. They were transferred there after the YCS closed Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre when that establishment effectively experienced a full melt down.

Girls in custody usually have very different needs to boys. Establishments need to be geared to meeting these specific needs and must be able to show they can do so with sensitivity, decency and respect. Self-harming, and all that follows from that, is a dominant issue for girls in a way that it just isn’t for boys.

There is good evidence that boys and girls can be accommodated together in Secure Children’s Homes, but the history in Secure Training Centres is mixed. Holding boys with girls in Young Offender Institutions is a very recent experiment which—on the most recent evidence—just does not work.

The Prison Reform Trust was informed in 2021, that placing girls in a boy’s YOI would go ahead as a short-term measure while longer term plans were developed. In November 2021, five months later, we expressed our concern to the YCS together with the Alliance for Youth Justice, that this short-term measure continued.

In response, we were assured that there was a plan to move girls into the remaining Secure Training Centre “from the end of February 2022”.  A “Girls Care Strategy” would also be finalised “in early 2022”. These promises were not met. Girls remained at Wetherby.

Fifteen months later the YCS produced an internal “Girls Care Approach”. This has never been published, or been subject to any open consultation. Insiders who have seen the document describe it as being “slight”, and it doesn’t address the central issue of where girls in custody are best and most safely placed. Nor does it, I suspect, really describe the way the system needs to respond to girls. Perhaps it is time for the YCS’ ‘approach’ to be exposed to the light of day?

When the YCS is challenged about its continued use of prisons, the account most usually used is that the Secure Children’s Homes repeatedly say “no” to requests for placements. The Secure Children’s Home network disputes this account as far too simple. Regardless, the YCS has now had nearly three years to come up with a better answer. It has chosen not to.

This sad story is part of three bigger stories. The first is that the Ministry of Justice has steadfastly refused to produce a strategy for youth custody for years. I have notes of a meeting I held with a senior official in November 2017 about the need for this. Sadly, successive senior civil servants have placed this in their ‘too difficult’ box. That is until last month when, with a General Election looming, we have been told that there will be a consultation on a strategy. A small victory—but a decade overdue.

The second bigger story is that this failure to engage properly with the needs of girls is by no means confined to the YCS. Look across the whole youth justice system and there are huge gaps in devising a girls approach—a fact highlighted eloquently in Pippa Goodfellow’s recent research as well as her earlier paper for The Griffins Society. I know at first hand that individual practitioners are doing their very best to develop approaches for their work with girls in trouble, but this needs to be brought together and led from the centre. It should be an urgent priority for the Youth Justice Board.

Lastly, in recent years the formerly very distinctive Keppel Unit—designed in 2008 to provide a national service for the most troubled boys in custody—appears to have lost its way. In the past five years inspection reports chart a decline in ‘safe prison’ scores. In its 2022 review the chief inspector said that the “Keppel Unit has lost its identity … Children and staff had experienced unstable leadership; outcomes had declined in all areas”. Tellingly the most recent inspection report treats Keppel as just another part of Wetherby prison, reflecting probably the current reality—but not the original intention—for this unit.

We need to say, loud and clear, that girls should not be held in boys’ prisons. To imprison them in this way shames us all.

John Drew
Senior Associate, Prison Reform Trust, and Chief Executive of the Youth Justice Board 2009–2013