Youth Justice News
| Author | Tim Bateman |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225419869686 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225419869686
Youth Justice
2019, Vol. 19(3) 309 –319
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225419869686
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Youth Justice News
Tim Bateman
More Than One-Third of Custodial Sentences for
Girls, in England and Wales, Imposed for
Non-Violent Offences
The number of children in custody in England and Wales has fallen sharply over the last
decade. The population of the children’s secure estate stood at 3012 in April 2008 but had
declined to 804 in April 2019, a reduction of 73 per cent. A report published by the Griffin
Society in May 2019 points out that the downward trend for girls has been significantly
more pronounced than that for boys, falling by 86 per cent, from 221 to 30, over the same
period. This contrasts with trends over the previous decade which saw rises in the use of
custodial sentencing for all children but with the increase for girls outstripping, by some
margin, than for boys: a rise of 365 per cent against 68 per cent between 1993 and 2002.
Over the next 4 years, the number of girls sentenced to imprisonment grew by a quarter,
while the incarceration of boys remained relatively stable.
There is a general consensus that the more recent contraction in the numbers of chil-
dren deprived of their liberty, by diverting many of those with less complex needs, has led
to a concentration of children in custody with more entrenched patterns of offending who
require higher levels of support and may be more challenging. However, the published
information specifically in relation to girls in the secure estate is limited, and the implica-
tions for this cohort of reducing levels of incarceration are rarely explored.
The Griffin Society report goes some way to filling that gap through an analysis of
previously unpublished case-level data, provided by the placement team within the Youth
Justice Board for England and Wales. The information derives from Placement Information
Forms completed by the relevant youth offending team prior to the custodial episode and
captures all girls in custody on 1 April 2014 and all admissions of girls to the secure estate
over the subsequent 2 years. The figures are for the number of admissions rather than
individual girls, some of whom may have experienced more than one episode in the secure
estate over the relevant time frame. Moreover, the data relate to throughput rather than the
snapshot figures for the population of the custodial estate on a single day that appear in
the monthly statistics on youth custody published regularly by the Ministry of Justice.
Corresponding author:
Tim Bateman, School of Applied Social Studies, University of Bedfordshire, University Square, Luton LU1 3JU, UK.
Email: tim.bateman@beds.ac.uk
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