Investigation into solitary confinement in juvenile detention

The entrance to HMP Cookham Wood in Rochester, Kent. Image: PA Images / Alamy.

“I get mad bored, there’s nothing to do. Staff literally open your door for two seconds to give you your food… it’s minimal interaction. I don’t think that’s right… it’s basically seg,” a 17-year-old locked up, away from his peers at a young offenders’ institution (YOI), said in 2019.

Five years on, data released by the Ministry of Justice shows that teenagers in England and Wales’ YOI estate have been “separated” away from other detainees for up to six months, with criminal justice campaigners stressing that “prison is no place for a child”.

Over the years, the prison inspectorate, the children’s commissioner, doctors and criminal justice campaigners have said that too often in the young offenders’ estate separation—where teenagers are held apart from their peers “for the maintenance of good order or discipline or in his own interest”, often due to risk of violence—amounts to solitary confinement.

Widespread cases of separated children spending 22 hours or more in their cells have been recorded. In an excoriating report in 2020, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) said that “most” separated children experienced a regime amounting to solitary confinement—and four years on, HMIP found that “almost all” these failings continued.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act reveal that between April 2023 and March 2024, teenagers in YOIs were separated for a maximum of 182 days at Parc prison in south Wales; 180 days at Wetherby in West Yorkshire; and 174 at Feltham A in west London.

The longest period teenagers spent in separation at Cookham Wood in Kent, which was closed earlier this year after failing to improve conditions, was 148 days, while at Werrington in Staffordshire it was 46 days. All such institutions have 15- to 17-year-olds in their custody, though they have also in recent years held 18-year-olds due to the capacity crisis in adult prisons.

It is not known how many hours per day separated teens were locked up for in the cases disclosed under FOI, and there is no evidence that they have been held in conditions comparable to solitary confinement for the entire period stated. The Ministry of Justice also noted in its disclosure that in cases where a fresh period of separation begins within five days of a previous one, it is considered to be a single period.

A progress review by HMIP in October on the use of separation found “many children continued to be subject to solitary confinement and unable to access the basics, including exercise”. Most separated children “rarely received education”, it found, and those who did received below the weekly statutory 15 hours, which is the minimum mandated in YOIs. It concluded that “separated children continue to spend nearly all of their time locked in their cells”, and warned that some children “self-separated” in fear of violence.

The review noted that institutions differed in their separation regimes, with Parc—the only privately run YOI in the UK—providing separated children with productive routines, including up to nine hours out of cells (though some received just 90 minutes). HMIP also found that there were 179 separations across the YOI estate that lasted between 21 days and 100 days, and 21 children were separated for over 100 days.

Data disclosed under FOI also showed that the longest period of separation rose, compared with the period April 2022 to March 2023, in all but one institution—Werrington. The longest incident in that year was 89 days in Cookham Wood; 52 in Feltham A; 84 at Parc; 122 in Werrington; and 161 in Wetherby.

The national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association union, Mark Fairhurst, says that separation is the “only control measure” YOI staff have against violence: “It’s very difficult to unlock people, when staff who should be on duty are off sick because they’ve been assaulted and ended up in hospital.”

But Gemma Abbott, the legal director of penal reform charity the Howard League, tells me that instances of prolonged separation were “yet more evidence” that “prison is no place for a child”.

“All children need exercise, education, contact with other people and their peers, if they’re to grow and progress. It seems to have been somehow accepted that we can have prisons that inflict harm on children—it’s really distressing.”

Abbott says that YOIs should be replaced with the “smaller, localised, much more familial settings of secure children’s homes”, and calls on the government to commit to this.

The Alliance for Youth Justice’s chief executive, Jess Mullen, echoes Abbott’s call for the government to close YOIs. “Vulnerable children, spending excessive time in solitary confinement, experience increased frustration and aggression, further fuelling the cycle… and exacerbat[ing] their trauma,” she says, adding that they instead need support from specialised staff who can de-escalate tensions in small, “rights-respecting” establishments near their homes.

The number of under-18s held in YOIs has fallen over the past two decades to around 430 on average per institution, meaning that the teenagers who are now in custody have been charged with more serious crimes and often have highly complex needs. “The most violent cohort of prisoners we now deal with are those under 18,” says Fairhurst. Teenagers across YOIs committed 331 assaults against their peers and staff per 100 young offenders in the year to March 2024, according to government data. Across the rest of the male custody estate, this figure was 317 per 1,000 prisoners. Self-harm rates were also much higher in the YOI estate.

“A lot of issues are gang-related—there are rival gangs in the youth prisons, and as soon as you unlock them together, they attack each other… or staff,” says Fairhurst. Keep-apart regimes—where certain children are not able to be in the same space – are also used to control warring groups.

Ensuring children and staff are safe while reducing reliance on separation requires heavy investment, says Fairhurst, who argues for small units with higher staffing ratios. “Then you could unlock everyone together, because even if they tried to assault each other, there’s that many staff around, they won’t be able to. They would have to learn to associate with each other. That’s the only way you’re going to combat this.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson says: “Separation is used as a last resort and only when absolutely necessary to prevent harm to the child or others. We are working hard to tackle violence and improve access to the vital education and support that these children need to turn their lives around.”