Nacro responds to today’s (10.06.2025) review from HMIP, ‘Building Trust: the importance of positive relationships in young offender’s institutions’, which looks into children’s perceptions of their relationships with staff.
Campbell Robb, Chief Executive of Nacro, said:
“Today’s report is more evidence that the environment in our young offender institutions (YOIs) is profoundly harmful for children, many of whom are already extremely vulnerable. Self-harm, violence and isolation are all major issues in the youth estate. Children need to have adults they can trust to deal with these problems and keep them safe. Yet, this report shows this is another area where children are being failed. This is a growing crisis, the proportion of children saying they felt unsafe in custody has doubled in the past year. This must change. Today’s report should prompt the Government to take urgent action. We urge them to ensure that children should only be held in custody as an absolute last resort and to ensure a safe, rehabilitative environment in all YOIs to give young people the best possible chance to change.”
Notes to Editors
Learn more about our work
We operate in more than 40 prisons and provide services across England and Wales. We help 28,000 people across our services each year and run the CAS-2 service for the Government housing people coming out of prison on bail or licence. We work with people at every stage of the criminal justice system, from liaison and diversion services in police custody and courts, to resettlement into the community after prison. We use the insights from our services and the experiences of the people we support to campaign together for a criminal justice system which better serves us all. We’ve been working in this field for more than 50 years.
