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Children's legal team
The Howard League’s legal work began with the Children Act case in 2002, which changed the law to require that children in custody are protected by the law in the same way as children in the community.
We continue to represent children in secure children’s homes and prison accommodation. We have grown a lot since 2002 and now have a team coordinated by Laura Janes. The kind of work we do includes representing children’s rights while they are locked up, including helping to make sure they have decent support and accommodation when they leave prison or secure centres and homes, advising children on criminal appeals and representing them before the Parole Board. We use many different ways of working to achieve this, including bringing judicial reviews where necessary.
About children who are locked up
Between 2000 and 3000 under 18 year olds are locked up in England and Wales at any one time. We lock up more children than nearly all other European countries. The criminal age of responsibility is 10 and we have had clients as young as 12 serving custodial sentences. More information about the age of criminal responsibility and how other countries treat children in trouble can be found in our publication Punishing Children.
Children can be held in Local Authority Secure Children’s Homes, Secure Training Centres, or Young Offender Institutions. Places are allocated to young people by the Youth Justice Board according to their age and needs.
There are strict laws and prison rules designed to protect children who are locked up, including the regime for juveniles Prison Service Order 4950 and the Children Act 1989. Despite these rules, children who are locked up are still wrongly isolated and punished, physically restrained sometimes with excessive force, not given access to legal advice or help for parole applications and are often not provided with the appropriate care and treatment that they need.
More information
For more information about children in trouble with the law read:
- Chaos, neglect and abuse
- Punishing children: A survey of criminal responsibility and approaches across Europe
- Children in Prison: An independent submission to United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child
- Parole 4 Kids: A Review of the Parole Process for Children in England and Wales
- Analysis of the Inspectorate of Prisons Reports on Young Offender Institutions holding children in custody
- Custody panels: Impact of a pilot scheme on juvenile sentencing rates
- Children as Victims: Child-sized crimes in a child-sized world
- To devolve or not to devolve? The pros and cons of making local authorities financially responsible for children in penal custody
- The Carlile Inquiry An independent inquiry by Lord Carlile of Berriew QC into physical restraint, solitary confinement and forcible strip searching of children in prisons, secure training centres and local authority secure children's homes.
- Violence Against Children in Conflict with the Law
- Why carry a weapon? A study of knife crime amongst 15-17 year old males in London. By Nicola Marfleet
- Youth justice in Wales: Thinking beyond the prison bars
- Jersey review. A review of the Jersey youth justice system.
The Howard League online