Andrea Coomber became Chief Executive at the Howard League for Penal Reform in November 2021. She was previously Director of JUSTICE and, before that, Equality Lawyer and then Legal Director at INTERIGHTS, litigating strategic cases before regional human rights courts. She is qualified as a barrister and solicitor in Australia. She has a BA/LLB (Hons) from the University of Western Australia and an LLM (Dist.) from the London School of Economics. Since 2019, she has served as a Lay Member of the House of Lords Conduct Committee. In 2022, she was appointed Queen's Counsel (Honoris Causa) for making a major contribution to the development of the law in England and Wales.

The Howard League for Penal Reform is a charity working for less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison. Through legal work, research and campaigning, and with the support of its members, the Howard League discovers and promotes solutions that deliver better justice and prevent people becoming victims of crime.

For two decades, the charity's legal team has helped to transform law, policy and practice for children and young adults in the criminal justice system. The team works to provide solutions for individuals, as well as wider policy changes to prevent the problems reoccurring for other young people.

In 2023, the Howard League has launched a three-year project to investigate racial disparities in youth justice in England and Wales. Could you tell us about the reasons that motivated you to launch it?

People from racialised minorities are significantly over-represented in prison, and we are committed to challenging laws, policies and procedures that result in over-incarceration, particularly of young Black men.

Structural discrimination starts early – Black children are four times more likely to be arrested, and three times more likely to be stopped and searched, than their White counterparts. Black Caribbean children are up to six times more likely to be excluded from school. Black children comprise only four per cent of 10- to 17-year-olds nationwide, but account for almost one in three children in prison.

We want to know why this is happening, and what can be done to address it.

What are the main actions that are going to take place in the framework of this project over the next three years?

The project has begun looking closely at remand and joint enterprise – two routes through which disproportionate numbers of young people from racialised minorities have been sent to prison.

We are speaking to key actors in these processes, including youth justice services, magistrates, legal practitioners, staff in secure settings and local authority placements teams, and, of course, children. We are building an evidence base, with which we can lobby decision-makers for change. We intend to publish our first briefing shortly.

You are a member of the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) Alliance, which advocates for a criminal justice system that takes a distinct approach to young adults aged 18-25, as young people still in development. What are the latest developments in this sense in England and Wales?

Unfortunately, an increasing proportion of children in custody are likely to face the unsettling transition into an adult estate that fails to meet young people’s needs. Neither the safeguarding system for children nor the safeguarding system for adults are built for the distinct needs of older children and young adults, and on turning 18 young people tend to see support withdrawn.

An evidence review published in April showed that racially minoritised young people were less likely to be supported appropriately through the transition to adulthood.

In 2010, the Howard League launched a programme to reduce the high number of child arrests in England and Wales, which has since been highly effective in contributing to this reduction. What have been the key elements of this success?

In 2010, police in England and Wales made 245,763 arrests of children. In 2020, the number was 63,272 – a reduction of 74 per cent in a decade. This was important progress because research has shown that each contact a child has with the criminal justice system drags them deeper into it, leading to more crime.

In previous years, police forces had been given targets that incentivised them to make more arrests, but moving away from this approach freed up resources to tackle more serious crime and ensured that more children could be given a brighter future.

The Howard League met senior officers and encouraged them to use their discretion when responding to calls involving children. Where we encountered good practice, we highlighted it so that police forces in other parts of the country could learn from it. We charted our progress by using freedom of information legislation to access arrest data each year, and we promoted these figures in the media to draw wider attention to the campaign.

In July of this year, the Howard League joined over 30 signatories that sent a letter to the youth justice Minister raising the alarm about deteriorating conditions for children in custodial measures in England and Wales. What were your main concerns?

We are particularly concerned about the proposed roll-out of a synthetic incapacitant spray called PAVA to the children’s secure estate, which the letter described as “contrary to best interests and welfare principles for the care of children”.

PAVA has been used in adult prisons. Prison operational guidance states: “PAVA spray is to be directed towards the eyes and can disable and/or incapacitate most subjects. A full recovery should take place within 40 minutes. However, it is not universally effective and some individuals may suffer little to no effects, whilst others may have a longer or more severe reaction.”

We have seen from the pilot evaluation of PAVA’s use in adult prisons that it undermined relationships between staff and prisoners and failed to reduce violence. It was used disproportionately against younger prisoners, Black prisoners and Muslim prisoners. About one in four deployments involved PAVA being used in an unsafe manner, such as in confined spaces, at height, at point-blank range or at the wrong target.

Even after a legal case was brought and safeguards were promised to monitor and scrutinise PAVA, inspections by the official prisons watchdog have found that it has not been employed correctly, with a lack of body camera footage during deployment and no correlation with a decrease in violence.

More generally, we are concerned about staffing shortages, overuse of segregation and isolation, and the erosion of the distinct child estate, which is child-focused and welfare-based.

What were the signatories’ proposals for actions to take regarding these concerns?

PAVA should not be implemented; there are existing methods to manage behaviour. In terms of the distinction of the child estate, the goal ought to be to have a tailored, individual, best-interests approach about location and transitions.

A key action to take would be improving regime. If children and young adults were out of cells more, offered more opportunities and doing more purposeful things, engaged in education, learning to mix with others and occupied and distracted, then behaviour would become more manageable, not less. We have seen from inspection reports – compare Cookham Wood with Parc – that a purposeful regime makes a significant difference.

Over the next five years, what developments would the Howard League like to see happen in the youth justice system of England and Wales?

The list is long! Ultimately, we would like to see fewer children held in custody and for youth custody to look very different from the appalling conditions we currently see in England and Wales. This ambition may take longer than five years to take hold, however. In the meantime, there are actions we would like to see taken forward as a matter of urgency.

We would like to see a reduction in the number of children on remand.

We would like to see improved regime, including a commitment to providing the statutory minimum of 15 hours (and recommendation of 30 hours) of education and appropriate support for children and young people with special educational needs.

We would like to see a reduction in the use of force, to include ending the use of pain-inducing restraint techniques on children and a ban on the use of force for compliance purposes in young offender institutions. (This would make the position in young offender institutions the same as that in secure training centres, and in line with recommendations by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.)

And we need to see action to address the racial disproportionality of children in custody.