Thread by @MartynMcL

EXCL Children as young as 11 - under the age of criminal prosecution - are among 5,996 youngsters held overnight in police custody across Scotland since 2018. A leading children’s rights academic said children’s rights are being breached. Thread👇scotsman.com/news/politics/…

These figures emerged following a carefully tailored freedom of information request I sent to Police Scotland, seeking breakdowns by age / location of children being detained in police custody. The fact this info isn’t proactively or publicly published is a prob I’ll return to.

I found that 95 children aged 13 or under were among those held overnight in police custody. But the figure jumps to 827 among 14 and 15 year-olds, and even higher (5,074) among those aged 16 and 17.

A breakdown of the length of time children were detained shows that the majority were held for between 8 and 24 hours, but over 1,500 were in police custody for longer than 24 hours.

The most common crimes in connection with the detentions was abusive behaviour or assault, but they included a raft of minor offences, such as possession of false ID, being drunk and incapable, or being found with alcohol in a sports ground.

A total of 125 children who were detained overnight had been arrested in connection with shoplifting offences, the data shows, while last year, four children who failed to comply with coronavirus regulations were also detained.

The data doesn’t specify whether children arrested with these offences in isolation, or if other offences were in play. Even so, the fact that so many children being detained in police custody in connection with minor offences is deeply problematic.

Police Scotland say public safety, with due consideration to the relevant Lord Advocate’s guidelines is its “top priority” when deciding to retain individuals in custody. That approach seems inconsistent with data I detailing children being arrested over minor offences.

The force’s Assistant Chief Constable Kenny MacDonald told me every custody decision is subject to a rigorous and ongoing review to ensure they are necessary and proportionate, but accepted the number of children in custody is “higher than we would wish.”

So why is this happening? Why are thousands of children across Scotland being held in custody designed for adult offenders, when they should be directed to an appropriate ‘place of safety’ ie - local authority secure accommodation?

Emma Jardine from @howardleague_sc told me that complex referral processes and a lack of those local authority secure care places are often cited as the reasons why children are held in adult custody. Here’s her analysis of the situation: scotsman.com/news/crime/ana…

But problems with local authority secure places are as old as the hills. An @hmics report into custody highlighted it *seven years* ago, and the data in my FoI disclosure makes clear children are being held in adult custody all over Scotland, so it’s not a ‘postcode’ issue.

One of the grim ironies of this story is that I found out about thousands of kids being held overnight in police custody across Scotland in the same month MSPs voted unanimously to directly incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law.

This is a significant and welcome step, and @scotgov has made a big deal of it. But unless Scottish authorities are prepared to step up and meet the obligations set out in the UNCRC, incoming MSPs might well ask what purpose the incorporation is designed to serve?

.@TracyKirk01 told me: “These statistics suggest the need for a culture change within Police Scotland to ensure those under 18 are treated as children first and foremost.”

.@C_Lightowler from @CYCJScotland told me: “This evidence highlights that children are not being responded to appropriately across the justice system with obvious failures to take their status as a child into consideration.”

.@CYPCS expressed shock at the figures. It intends to raise the findings of my report at the next meeting of the Scottish Police Authority’s independent advisory group to scrutinise Police Scotland’s use of emergency powers.

At the very least, I hope an outcome of that is that stats on children being detained overnight in police custody are collated and published on a regular basis going forward. I first wrote about this in 2013. The same problems remain. martynmclaughlin.com/investigations…

Other journalists, like Jamie, have found their attempts to get info thwarted. Some have been forced to appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner. It’s not good enough. Obtaining this data shouldn’t be dependent on the specificity of an FoI request.

https://twitter.com/jamiebeatson/status/1376106283280048130?s=20

And even when an FoI is successful, it tells part of the story. How many of those 5,996 children held overnight in police cells are vulnerable? What’s the long-term impact of the justice system failing them? Why is the problem of council care accommodation so persistent?

Thanks for reading. If you have a story, or a tip off, around this issue, my DMs are open, or you can email martynmcl at protonmail dot com.