Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill: Parts 8 and 9 – Youth justice, secure children’s homes and secure academies

Part 8 of the Bill would:

• Make changes to the tests for custodial remand for children with the aim of reducing its use and provide a statutory duty for the court to consider the welfare and best interests of the child when applying the tests to remand a child to custody.
• Makes changes to Detention and Training Orders (DTOs):
  • To remove the fixed lengths of the DTO.
  • To provide that where an offender is given two or more sentences (one of which is a DTO), those sentences are to be treated as a single term for the purposes of crediting days spent in custody or on qualifying bail.
  • To provide that time spent on remand or bail subject to a qualifying curfew condition and an electronic monitoring condition is counted as time served and credited against the custodial part of the DTO.
• Makes changes to Youth Rehabilitation Orders (YROs):
  • To increase the maximum daily curfew to 20 hours while retaining a weekly maximum of 112 hours.
  • To introduce location monitoring as a standalone requirement that can be imposed in YROs. This measure would be piloted.
  • To make youth offending teams or probation staff the Responsible Officers in cases where electronic monitoring requirements are imposed.
  • To increase the maximum length of an extended activity requirement of a YRO with Intensive Supervision and Surveillance (ISS) to 12 months and add a location monitoring requirement as a mandatory element of the ISS. These measures would be piloted.
  • To raise the age limit of the education requirement so that it is the same as the age of compulsory education and training, rather than compulsory school age.
• Abolish Reparation Orders.

Part 9 of the Bill would:

• Provide a statutory power for the temporary release of children detained in Secure Children’s Homes.
• Allow 16-19 academies to provide secure accommodation and allow for the establishment and running of a secure 16 to 19 academy to be treated as a charitable purpose.
• Insert secure 16 to 19 academies into the definition of youth detention accommodation and apply the provisions of the Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015 to secure 16 to 19 academies.

The clauses discussed in this briefing would apply and extend to England and Wales only, except for Clause 138 which would extend to England and Wales, apply to England and apply to Wales in part.

The Government has published the following factsheets in connection with these parts of the Bill:

• Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021: youth custodial remand factsheet
• Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021: youth community sentences factsheet
• Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021: secure schools factsheet