Judgement causes headaches for Prison Service chiefs

Home Office Can Appeal against Youth Detention Ruling

The High Court ruled on Tuesday in the case of a 16-year-old girl who spent 15 days in Risley prison in Cheshire. The ruling alarmed the Home Office and the Prison Service, especially as it later emerged that the same applied to an even greater number of young male offenders. They cannot be properly accommodated because of a shortage of places for juveniles.

Government broke its own rules under Criminal Justice Act

The judgment, details of which have just been released, enforces a section of the Criminal Justice Act which states that offenders under 21, who are sentenced to detention in a young offender institution, must be sent to one. But the act does contain a power to detain in prison in individual cases.

Mr Justice Sedley and Mr Justice Astill held that the Home Office was acting unlawfully, violating the "no prison" principle in using this power as a blanket policy covering all young women. Such people should not, the judges said, automatically be sent to adult jails pending removal to young offender units.

"We record our anxiety at the issues raised about the possibility of close and unsupervised contact between a young offender, who will by definition be in some measure disturbed, and adult women prisoners whose range of possible deviances needs no elaboration - this despite evidence of steps taken to prevent abuse," said Mr Justice Sedley.

Mr Justice Astill said: "In prison, young female offenders mix with adult offenders, some of whom have committed grave crimes and many of whom have disturbing personal problems. They often remain there for weeks before a place in a young offenders' institution is found. It would be difficult to find any argument which supported that position.

Locking up young offenders with adults no longer an option

"The decision of this court will give effect to the purpose of the legislation, which is to protect often vulnerable young offenders from the possibility of malign influences," he added.

The Appeal

The judges heard that the girl at the centre of the case, referred to as 'F', had now been found a place at Styal women's prison in Cheshire - one of five adult prisons that has a special young offenders' unit.

But the judges ordered that the girl remain free on bail until a correctly-worded committal warrant, naming Styal and not Risley, was issued. The girl, from Accrington, Lancashire, was sentenced to eight months at Accrington Youth Court, on July 29 for robbery, assaulting a police officer, disorderly behaviour and other offences.

It is not known whether she has yet been re-arrested under a new warrant.