Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I support the noble Baroness’s amendment and could not have agreed more with every word that she said. However, I do so with a certain sadness because what she said has been said over and again for the last 12 years—to my certain knowledge, because I have been involved in a certain amount of the saying of it. All I want is to add two words to Amendment No. 116, which states: "““No person … shall be detained in a young offender institution or a secure training centre””." The relevant words are ““prison or””. When I inspected Holloway in December 1995 the governor told me that there were four 15 year-olds in the prison. I asked where they were and why. She did not know where they were and I said that we would look for them during the day I spent with her. We did not find any of them that day but the following morning I found two of them when I went down to the antenatal unit and noticed on the wall a list of names and ages, two of which were 15. I asked the midwife, ““Are those two girls pregnant?””. She said no. I asked, ““Why are they here?””. She said, ““Because they don’t know where else to put them””. I asked, ““Are all the women pregnant?””. She said, ““No, we’ve got psychiatrically disturbed and others””. I wondered how on earth a prison service could put two 15 year-old children into such a place in 1995. Having made a fuss then and had promise after promise made to me over the next five and a half years for which I was responsible for inspecting prisons, what disturbs me is that there are still young female children in adult prison accommodation. Furthermore, during this time of overcrowding, about which we are all concerned, there are children who are being moved into adult prisons before they reach their 18th birthday as an administrative convenience. I personally think that it is utterly unacceptable that any child should go into an adult prison. It should not be necessary to include this in legislation because common sense should prevent it. But as we are spelling out precisely where they should not go, I do not think that it would be consistent with all that we have said about protecting the child if we did not add those two words to the otherwise excellent and complete summary of what is required that the noble Baroness has so ably put forward.