Prison custody fatally flawed for children and young people

Responding to today's news that 200 children and young people have died while in prison custody over the past decade, Action for Children is calling for youth custody to be considered only as a last resort.

Through 140-plus years' experience of working with the most vulnerable in society, the charity believes exploring alternatives to prison custody is essential to offering young offenders the best chance in life.

We run two-thirds of the original Intensive Fostering pilots (also known as Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care), which provide a substitute for custody through a community-based sentence working with a specially trained foster carer.

In a recent session at the Justice Select Committee, Action for Children Director Hugh Thornbery said, "Intensive Fostering captures the whole intervention: the foster placement for the young person; the therapeutic interventions; the skills interventions; and work with family that hopefully enables things to be more stable if the young person returns home."

Hugh continued, "The fact that young people in Intensive Fostering are five times less likely to reoffend over time than those who go into custodial institutions we can begin to take account of the broader social costs."