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For a young person to qualify for a place in one of the Prison Service's under-18 custodial establishments, they will probably have experienced some pretty negative and challenging events in their lives. The universal qualification shared by all young people in custody is simply this: Sufficient evidence was produced in a court of law that convinced the Bench that in order to ensure that the public are protected, the only realistic option available was to either remand or sentence that young person to a secure facility.

Though there is a popular view (I mention it a lot) that first points to a 78% recidivism rate and then states that 'Prison Doesn't Work', statistical evidence plainly shows that further qualifying attributes of young people in custody include, the 'Family, Education & Local Authority Care' not having worked particularly well for them either.

In fact, if we were to randomly gather together 100 of these young people, we would find that they share the following rather disturbing commonalities, most of which occured prior to the custodial experience - not as a result of it (see Hard Facts):

• 44 will have a history of local authority care 
• 45 will have lived in inappropriate accommodation at some point in the 12-months prior to sentence
• 28 will have no accommodation placement arranged for them on release (there's also no guarantee that for those who do, the placement is 'suitable')
• 12 will already have children of their own
• 85 will show signs of personality disorder
• 31 will have mental health needs, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress
• 55 will not have had access to full-time education prior to sentence
• 28 will have had no education provision at all prior to sentence
• 50 will have literacy and numeracy skills below those of an 11-year old
• 25 will have literacy and numeracy skills of an average 7-year old or below
• 60 will have been in custody more than once
• 6 will have been in custody more than 5 times; and
• 70 (out of 100) of some London boroughs will be from minority ethnic communities

These 'qualification' are a sad indictment on the life of any 16-17 year old. The suggestion that these young custody leavers are somehow qualified to make a successful transition into adulthood without the assistance of robust and long-term specialist support on release is ridiculous. The care leaving parallels should be obvious to all.