WIREDGOV

When I speak to children about what it’s like to be a child in England, a theme that often comes up is their desire to feel safe and confident in their homes, schools and local areas.  

As Children’s Commissioner I have heard from hundreds of thousands of children about their worries, their ambitions and their priorities. My role is to promote and protect the rights every child has by law in this country. Those rights include the right to play, to learn, to have a family life, and to be protected from violence.  

It includes young people in the justice system equally to any other child. But I am concerned by practices that do not prioritise their safety, and even more so by suggestions that additional measures such as chemical deterrent sprays could be introduced into the youth secure estate. I believe these measures would serve to increase the risk of violence to these uniquely vulnerable children, not lower it.  

“I think the Government should try to make children feel safe whoever they are, wherever they are.” – Girl, 9.  

In The Big Ambition, I set out my ambitions for all children, including:   

• Every child is prevented from being affected by violence and criminality.   
• Every child is safer after an interaction with the police or youth justice system.   

Over the last three years I have looked closely at the way that children are treated by the services that are meant to be keeping them safe. This has involved collecting and analysing unpublished data on strip searching of children by police in England in Wales, finding that more than 3,000 strip searches were conducted on children over a five-and-a-half-year period, equivalent to one search every 14 hours on average.  

These numbers are shocking, and earlier this year I outline how the police practice that can leave children traumatised. But strip searches are not the only police practice that puts children at risk. The most recently published official statistics on police use of force show that in 2022/23, there were 562 incidents of irritant spray used on children by police officers.

Chemical irritant sprays such as pelargonic acid vanillylamide (known as PAVA) are approved for use by police and prison services in the UK and are used to incapacitate individuals by causing severe pain to the eyes.

Too often it appears the police are forgetting that the children in their care are children first and foremost, with the inherent vulnerabilities we all have in childhood. Their primary duty must be to safeguard them from harm. These figures suggest that there is work to be done to ensure training and guidelines on the use of force against children enables all officers to fulfil this duty.

I take very seriously any discussion regarding the possible introduction of PAVA into under-18 Youth Offending Institutions (YOIs), or any other part of the children’s secure estate.

These children are some of the most vulnerable in our society, many of whom have already been exposed to unimaginable levels of violence throughout their lives as well as having been let down by the services which ought to have been protecting them.

They must live in settings which meet their health, education and development needs, whilst providing stability, care and safety. The introduction of PAVA spray or any other so-called ‘less lethal weapons’ to these settings would put children’s physical and psychological safety at risk and be in direct contravention of their right to be protected from violence.

I will continue to work alongside government to advocate for all YOIs to close, but in the meantime, it is essential that everyone working in the youth justice system is able to prioritise keeping these environments safe, without perpetuating state violence against children.