High Court challenge over 17-year-olds’ custody rights
The High Court will hear a legal challenge to the practice of treating 17-year-olds detained in police custody as adults, in a judicial review being brought by Just For Kids Law next week.
The charity questions the legality of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act code of practice and the failure of the government and police to provide adequate support and protection to the 75,000 17-year-olds held in police custody each year.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every person under 18 must be treated as a child, unless the age of majority in their country is reached earlier. In the UK the age of majority is 18.
But under the PACE code of practice, issued by the home secretary, 17-year-olds are treated as adults and only given the protections afforded to other children at the discretion of the police. Those discretionary protections include access to an appropriate adult.
Just for Kids Law and Doughty Street’s Caoilfhionn Gallagher will argue that this puts the home secretary and the Metropolitan Police in violation of both international and domestic law.
They will also challenge the failure of the Met to comply with its statutory duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, under section 11 of the Children Act 2004.
The High Court challenge highlights the case of a 17-year-old boy with no criminal record who was detained at a London police station for 12 hours overnight on suspicion of robbery, before being released without charge.
His family was not told of his whereabouts for hours, even though he had specifically asked for his mother to be informed and for her assistance at the police station, and he was not offered the help of an appropriate adult.
Director of Just for Kids Law Shauneen Lambe said the case is not an isolated one: ‘17-year-olds are routinely treated as adults when dealing with the police, with detrimental consequences for the children. Just for Kids Law believes that all children should be entitled to the same protection in the law.’
The Howard League for Penal Reform and the Coram Children’s Legal Centre were given permission to intervene and make written legal submissions to the court. The case will be heard on Tuesday.
Comments
Well done Just4KidsLaw
I have never understood why a 17 year old should be treated as an adult, denied access to an appropriate adult and allowed to attempt to deal with a police interview alone (perhaps because of advice that getting a Solicitor causes delay) only then to be dealt with in the Youth Court as a child.
I would also like to see the Family Proceedings Court and the Youth Court merged into one Court with District Judges and Deputy District Judges appointed and specifically trained to deal with children cases. Any case of a child brought to Court for a criminal matter {which is such a rarity now due to out of court disposals} should be treated as a family matter so that all relevant issues can be addressed.
At the same time perhaps someone could think about why there is a Family Proceedings Court in the Magistrates Court and a Family Court in the County Court. Clearly Magistrates have a role to play in family proceedings and in the youth court but a rethink of how family and youth cases are processed is long overdue.
17 year olds in police stations
I am old enough to remember when 17 years olds were in adult courts. We are downright weird in this country! At 16 you can marry and leave home and now there is talk of 16 year olds being able to vote. We have "children" who roll up in the youth courts with babies in push chairs in tow and feckless young men that they are living with. You can decide to leave school at 16 at the moment, and no one can stop you. But yet you cannot buy a packet of cigarettes or a can of beer (in theory because both of these happen all the time). On the one hand the State wants to keep you as a child, and on the other it wants you to be an adult.
Isn't this a situation of "one size fits all" being daft. Some youngsters want to be adults. They are living independently and they don't want the Fuzzery phoning their parents. Others are definitely vulnerable and should not be interviewed without a family member to support them. Why not leave it to the custody sergeant to decide if an adult is wanted, and give the youngster the option of asking for one? People jumping on the Human Rights bandwagon may not be doing what the "juvenile" would actually want or need. I can think of several young clients who were very peeved when their parents were telephoned and asked to attend.