The Commons Justice Committee (CJC) report released this week is right to ring alarm bell on the current number of people on remand and the pressure this places on the prison system.

Although the number of young adults remanded to custody has fallen over the last ten years, as the Commons Justice Committee makes clear, there has been a worrying upward spike recently – one which may have lasting consequences.

T2A’s 2021 ‘Young Adults on Remand’ report by criminologist Rob Allen highlighted just how traumatic and disruptive a remand in custody can be for young adults. The report shed important light on how the use of remand increases significantly as a young person turns 18.

What’s also concerning is that the support for remand prisoners in prison and on release is almost non-existent. Without this specialist support, young adults in particular are less likely to have positive outcomes.

The case for an independent review

T2A endorses the Commons Justice Committee’s proposal for an independent review into whether the application of the Bail Act 1976 is still operating as intended. T2A believes that young adults should be an integral focus of the review. A period of imprisonment at such a young age is severely disruptive and can have even more impact on young adults than for older prisoners.

Racial disparity and the need for data

The CJC highlighted the lack of available published data. According to the report, data on the ethnicity of the remand population is only released every two years, though the data is collected internally and could be made available. T2A endorses recommendation four in the CJC report, that data on ethnicity be published regularly to monitor bail and remand decision-making, particularly in respect of young adults.

Our report in 2020 showed a clear disparity in decisions about those remanded to custody in Crown Court cases, with one in five of all those remanded in 2019 coming from Black and Minority Ethnic communities. More troubling still is despite Black defendants being more likely to be remanded into custody from the Crown Court, they are less likely than white defendants to go on to receive an immediate custodial sentence at the conclusion of proceedings.

The CJC report says:

“It is only on the basis of good quality data in respect of the use of custodial remand that there can be effective policy-making.

“More data needs to be collected and published on remanded defendants, particularly in relation to the reasons for refusing bail, the length of time people are spending on remand as well as demographic information, including vulnerabilities and protected characteristics amongst the remand population, to increase transparency and improve the information available to decision-makers.”

Ongoing T2A work on young adults and remand

T2A is currently supporting a new Howard League project which will shine a spotlight on the reality of the lived experiences of young adults on remand.

The work will build upon previous work by Howard League on Sentencing Principles for Young Adults (Jan 2019) and the Remanding children to prison report (Sept 2021) as well as the findings from the Rob Allen 2021 report. The Howard League project will:

• identify the reality of the lived experiences of young adults on remand,
• support young adults and professionals working with them to better understand the law and their rights that are relevant to remand decision-making,
• identify key areas for policy and practice improvement to reduce the number of young adults remanded to custody,
• and improve the experience of those who cannot be released.
• Ultimately the project will share the learnings from its work with practitioners, policymakers, and those making remand decisions to ensure the best outcomes for young adults.

To find out more about the T2A evidence base, visit our Research and Reports page.

Research and reports