- Hundreds of innocent children locked up each year and treated as guilty until proven innocent with custodial remand used as a ‘waiting room’ when wider services fail them
- Most went on to receive either no custodial sentence or had cases dropped – resulting in lengthy and unwarranted time behind bars
- Delivering annual Longford Lecture tonight, Commissioner will warn we have ‘retreated from our moral duty’ and ‘become complacent about children in custody’
- She will call for urgent reforms to youth justice, closing all Young Offender Institutions and increasing use of foster care over custody
Hundreds of children are left in a ‘waiting room’ limbo each year, being unnecessarily locked up in custody while awaiting trial or sentencing – not because they pose the greatest risk, but because the systems designed to support them are failing, the Children’s Commissioner has warned.
Research on the use of custodial remand for children – the process in which young people are held in custody while awaiting trial or sentencing, rather than being released on bail – shows that the majority did not go on to receive a custodial sentence or had their case dropped, despite many facing lengthy and anxious waits on remand.
Dame Rachel de Souza has called for urgent reforms to the youth justice system, including closing all Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) – where multiple inspection reports have warned of violence and serious safeguarding concerns – and instead increasing the use of familial, caring placements in secure homes or specialist foster care.
Delivering this year’s Longford Lecture in central London tonight (Tuesday), Dame Rachel will warn that a generation of children is being let down by society’s failure to provide moral leadership, allowing a vacuum to appear in the services on which children rely – social care, housing, education and justice.
She will urge society not to become ‘complacent’ about children living in custody, highlighting shocking reports of violence and poor staff practice at many youth justice settings in the past year alone: 23 staff members at Oakhill Secure Training Centre were suspended in the past year over allegations about their conduct with children, Feltham YOI was judged ‘the most violent prison in the country’ as recently as July 2024 by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Oasis Secure School was closed temporarily in August 2025 due to safety concerns in the building.
Delivering the Longford Lecture, Dame Rachel de Souza is expected to say:
“We are letting children down. By failing to provide moral leadership and show them what it means to be a child today.
“We have left a vacuum in the services that children need, in the moral and social fabric of our country. We have left it to children to fill it for themselves.
“We have retreated from our moral duty towards these children. And then we are surprised when they fall down. It is the way that we treat these children that we should be judged on.
“Childhood is short and wild and precious. But once you’re remanded into custody your innocence is gone. You see things. You’re told you’re guilty.
“Many of the young people I have spoken to tell me that their time in the secure estate exacerbates the disadvantage they face rather than addressing them. For a child to end up in custody usually means countless chances missed further up the line.
“I am worried that we have become complacent about children in custody. We have treated it as a battle won. That we have got down to a several hundred, rather than a several thousand children in custody.
“We have tweaked the forms of custody with the secure school, but not the fundamental approach to locking children up. We cannot stop at the last 400. We have to close all Young Offender Institutions.”
The Commissioner’s new report published today, Children in custodial remand, shows that while the proportion of remand to custody fell from a peak of 94% in 2015-16 to 71% in 2023-24, overall progress remains too slow and inconsistent, leaving too many children unnecessarily detained and exposed to harm.
In 2023-24, more than half of all remands to custody in England and Wales (62%) did not receive a custodial sentence. Among them, 168 children (17%) had their case dismissed altogether.
Despite a decrease in the use of remand over the last decade, the average length of time on remand increased by 89% since 2013-14 to 125 nights in 2021-22 – over four months. More than one in ten (14%) of remand cases were for more than 182 days, longer than both the custody limit of 56 days at Magistrates Court and the upper limit of 182 days at Crown Court.
The Commissioner’s report brings together data on looked after children and interviews of children in remand, as well as interviews with staff working with children on remand in the secure estate, with a view to develop a fuller understanding of children’s experiences of custodial remand and to ensure children’s voices are central to future reform.
It comes ahead of further research by the Commissioner due later this week on the criminalisation of children in care, which shows how often care experienced children are sidelined, ignored and treated unusually harshly by authorities simply due to their backgrounds and circumstances.
Today’s report’s key findings include:
- Limited choices: At the same time of overall use of remand falling, there were limited remaining options for children with foster care placements dropping from 13% in 2013-14 to 5% in 2021-22. At the same time, placements to residential or semi-independent placements rose from 2.5% to 11%.
- Local authority postcode lottery: The use of remand by local authorities varied substantially based on where children lived, with one local authority using custodial remand in all remand cases, while another used remand for 38% of cases. Almost two in five (38%) of local authorities used remand for at least three-quarters of cases.
- Racial inequality: Evident ethnic disparities pervade the justice system and remand is no exception. In 2021-22, over half (56%) of children remanded were from an Asian, black, mixed or other ethnic group, with black and mixed ethnicity children over-represented in the population of children on custodial remand.
- Multiple episodes and short episodes of remand: Multiple remand episodes were not uncommon, and of all children remanded into custody in 2021-22, a quarter had previously been remanded into custody. Short-term custodial remands were also common, with 11% of episodes being 14 nights or less, and 8% being 7 nights or less.
In interviews, children on remand frequently spoke about feelings of uncertainty and anxiety around their court hearings and the potential length of time they may spend in custody, while waiting for court decisions.
In her report today the Commissioner has set out a number of key reforms to improve the experiences and support for children in the justice system, including:
- A new, therapeutic youth justice system to replace the current secure estate, led by the Department for Education (DfE) and NHS England, delivered through smaller, homely settings close to where children live – backed by a clear plan to phase out the use of Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) and Secure Training Centres (STCs).
- Commissioning high needs accommodation placements on a regional basis, to ensure that children have equal access to suitable, high-quality placements designed to meet their specific needs, regardless of where they live.
- Inclusion of children on remand in new accommodation planning, with the DfE ensuring children on remand are fully including in the planning of new accommodation options being built for Section 25 of the Children Act, following the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2025.
- An independent ‘secure review’ into all the secure accommodation for children across care, health and justice, to ensure coordinated planning and consistent quality.
- Expansion of specialist remand fostering to provide a real alternative to custody – and meaning children are no longer held on remand simply because there is nowhere else for them to go.
- A statutory review mechanism to regularly reassess whether a child still needs to be held in custodial remand.
- A youth sentencing review to prohibit custodial sentences of less than 12 months and strengthen the use of robust, community-based alternatives.
In her previous reports The Children’s Plan and The Big Ambition, the Commissioner set out the structural changes needed across the system to improve outcomes for every child, including the introduction of a new Children’s Plan platform delivered alongside the unique identifying number for children promised by the government, to set out the support to which they are entitled and coordinate all multi-agency interventions.
She also highlighted the need for a comprehensive national strategy to address child criminal exploitation, reform for the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) system, and the mandatory safeguarding referral for any child arrested or suspected of involvement in criminality.
