Page 91 - JUSTICE Tackling Racial Injustice - Children and the Youth Justice System

pressures within the current processes, given that the court must engage with
multiple parties, each of whom have interlocking responsibilities for the child
in question in order for the preparation of a robust bail package. These include
defence representatives, the YOT, and the police. While the court is required
to be satisfied that sufficient time has been allowed to consider the information
presented, 245 we understand that this can be challenging in practice.

4.32 This is clearly far from ideal, and we believe could be remedied with additional
clear guidance, for example from the YJB, that all agencies should be required
to work together to produce an emergency bail package that will keep the child
out of secure accommodation. Where bail is refused at the first hearing, a
child should be remanded to local authority accommodation (rather than
youth detention accommodation), and the court should be provided with
a refined and bespoke bail package within 14 days.

4.33 We recommend that decisions regarding remand should be determined
246
with the same seriousness, care, and consideration as sentencing,
supported by a commensurate breadth and quality of information, and
possibly referred to district judges with sufficient experience and who can
be appropriately trained, rather than lay magistrates. This would help
achieve the Government’s objective to make remanding to custody a last
resort. 247

Data collection
4.34 In addition, we recommend that the MoJ centrally collates the reasons
which courts give for bail and remand decisions, and make the
information publicly available. This will allow for better scrutiny of

245 Criminal Procedure Rule 14.2(1)(d).
246 See the Sentencing Council, ‘Sentencing Children and Young People’, (June 2017), section 1.2:
“While the seriousness of the offence will be the starting point, the approach to sentencing should
be individualistic and focused on the child or young person, as opposed to offence focused. For a
child or young person the sentence should focus on rehabilitation where possible. A court should
also consider the effect the sentence is likely to have on the child or young person (both positive and
negative) as well as any underlying factors contributing to the offending behaviour.”

247 See section 4 of the Bail Act 1976, Standing Committee for Youth Justice, “Ensuring custody is the
last resort for children in England and Wales’, May 2020 and Ministry of Justice, ‘A Smarter Approach
to Sentencing’ September 2020, p.95.

84