Following the closure of a secure training centre in 2021, a small number of girls were placed in a prison for boys – Wetherby Young Offenders Institute. The measure was intended to be temporary, but the girls remain there after two and a half years. A recent prison inspectorate report highlighted difficulties with their treatment.

The Minister for Youth Justice has now announced a review of the care and location of girls in prison, which will report in February 2025. This Insight explains why girls were placed in a male young offenders institution.

Children in prison

The Youth Custody Service (YCS), part of the prison service is responsible for secure custody for children aged 10 to 17 years in England and Wales. It aims to “create a safe, decent and nurturing environment that provides outstanding levels of care and support for children in custody”.

The YCS directly manages prisons for boys – young offender institutions (YOIs). It also oversees secure training centres and local-authority-run secure children’s homes and decides where children going into custody will live.

After children are sentenced or remanded into custody, the YCS assesses their needs and risks before placing them in a secure setting. Boys aged up to 14, and older boys who are more vulnerable, are housed in a secure children’s home or a secure training centre. Most boys over 14 go to a young offenders institution. Managers at secure children’s homes can refuse to take a child if they believe they cannot meet the individual child’s needs alongside the needs of other children in their care.

Youth justice statistics show that the number of children in prison has reduced from over 4,000 in 2010 to around 540 in 2023. The children that are now in custody are described by the Children’s Commissioner as “very vulnerable with high levels of complex needs”. She has expressed concern that the secure estate cannot meet the needs of children held there.

Girls in custody

There are very few girls in custody (they usually make up less than 2% of the population of children in the secure estate). In the year ending March 2023, the average number of girls in custody was 12.

Girls were previously held in small units within adult women’s prisons. These units gradually closed as the numbers of girls in prison reduced. In 2013, the last ones closed and stakeholders welcomed the decision not to keep girls in prison.

While the number of girls in custody is low, they often have significant needs and are likely to have experienced sexual and physical violence. The prison inspectorate’s review of girls in custody found “trauma, neurodivergent conditions, self-harm, substance misuse, mental ill health and disrupted education” featured in many of their histories, with some having committed several previous offences.

Closure of Rainsbrook secure training centre

In June 2021, the government decided to remove children from a commissioned facility, Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre following an Ofsted report that raised longstanding concerns about safety and performance. Rainsbrook had received two Urgent Notifications (the process for raising serious concerns with the Justice Secretary) and Ofsted stated that the environment was unsafe for both children and staff.

The 33 children and young people living at Rainsbrook were moved to alternative secure settings. Some were old enough to transfer to adult prisons and others moved to another secure training centre.

A small number of girls were assessed by secure children’s home staff as unsuitable for placement there, and they were moved instead to HMP Wetherby, a young offenders’ institution for boys, as a temporary measure. They were located on the Keppel Unit, a specialist facility for particularly vulnerable children.

Wetherby had to accommodate girls at short notice and had no facilities to do this. The prison inspectorate raised concerns that staff did not have the training or expertise needed to care for girls with complex needs who required specialist support. Additional female officers were recruited, specific healthcare services were commissioned and a small section for girls was developed on the Keppel Unit.

Treatment of girls at HMP Wetherby

The prisons inspectorate is responsible for inspecting prisons holding children. Repeated inspections have shown that despite staff efforts, “The care for these [girls] and for other vulnerable and challenging children was… not good enough.”

The inspection report published in March 2024 found that girls were receiving less time out of their cells than boys on the same unit. It found that one girl, who was living alone on a separate unit, had no peer contact in the evenings and at weekends.

Constant supervision (a process where someone is watched continually to ensure they do not harm themselves) had been used with girls 10 times in a year. Girls had been restrained by staff 155 times. These figures were far higher than for similar prisons and around a third of these incidents were to prevent self-harm.

The prison inspectors also found that a girl had been strip searched by male staff. They found two occasions where a girl was using her clothes to make ligatures and had clothing removed by male officers. The policy on strip searching in prison is that this should be carried out by officers of the same sex as the person being searched. These incidents led to renewed calls from stakeholders to review the placement of girls in HMP Wetherby.

In November 2024 the Minister for Youth Justice, Nik Deakin, announced an independent review into the placement of girls in custody. Led by Susannah Hancock from the Youth Justice Board, the review will look at placement options and care for girls in the youth estate and report in February 2025.

About the author: Francesca Cooney is a researcher at the Commons Library specialising in prisons, probation and sentencing.

Photo by: William via Adobe Stock