Around 261,200 children are estimated to be in detention globally.
Around 261,200 children worldwide are estimated to have been in detention on any given day in 2020, according to new data published by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in November 2021. This represents an increase from previous estimates of between 160,000 and 250,000 children detained on any given day in 2018, in the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. The increase is especially significant given that among 157 countries worldwide, more than half have released children from detention since the start of the pandemic and one third had put alternatives to detention in place in response to the pandemic.
Among 157 countries worldwide, more than half have released children from detention in response to the pandemic.
The global average rate of detention is 29 children per 100,000 population. This varies significantly between regions, with the highest rate of child detention in North America (137 per 100,000), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (77 per 100,000) where the highest number of children are detained (50,300). The lowest rates of detention are in West and Central Africa and South Asia (8 and 12 children per 100,000 respectively). However, as UNICEF highlights, record keeping on the number and characteristics of children in detention commonly remains incomplete and unsystematic, which affects the reliability of available country data as well as regional and global estimates based on them.
Amid the release of this sobering data in November 2021, the fourth World Congress on Justice with Children was convened. The Congress culminated in the adoption of a Global Declaration calling for action towards the development of justice systems which genuinely include children, guarantee child-friendly access to justice for all children without discrimination, and are resilient in the face of crises and pandemics. The Declaration specifically calls for the development and use of age-appropriate, ability-inclusive, gender-responsive, and needs- and rights-based justice procedures and facilities for all children in contact with the law.
A number of regional themes emerged during the Congress and preparatory meetings. Experts from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago highlighted different approaches to restorative justice in the Caribbean and ways to ensure authorities listen to the voices of children in the justice system. Ways for children to become active parts of the organisations responsible for protecting their rights was central in Latin America, while in the US and Canada, raising the age of sentencing was identified as a key priority for reform to counter the criminalisation and ‘adultification’ of Black and Indigenous children that are often prosecuted like adults.
In the Middle East and North Africa, where diversion is still an emerging area that remains in the early stages, promising practices were identified in countries, like Egypt, in this area. Data during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that at least 13 out of 20 countries in the region used existing forms of alternatives to detention to release approximately 3,000 children. Countries that more efficiently used existing measures to implement alternatives to detention had several elements in common: interagency coordination bodies and mechanisms already established between justice and child protection authorities, trained social workers, and follow-up services in coordination with the NGO sector.
Children continue to face heightened risk of violence or ill-treatment in detention and feel the impact of COVID-19 measures. In England, inspectors at one prison found the rate of violent assaults on children had risen 70% in the past two years, during which time purposeful activity such as training and education had deteriorated and more than half of children were locked in cell during the school day; this was despite a 40% reduction in the prison’s population during that time. Youth detention facilities in at least two US states have placed high numbers of children into quarantines that, in practice, may be little different from solitary confinement, despite the practice being rejected by public health officials for adults as a non-medical, damaging and counterproductive response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In recent years, there has been a momentum toward prohibiting corporal punishment of children in all settings, including in the penal system. As of October 2021, 144 states worldwide prohibit physical punishment as a disciplinary measure in penal institutions for children, and 169 have abolished judicial corporal punishment (whipping, flogging, caning). A new law in Colombia in May 2021 means that indigenous children – who could previously be judged ‘according to the rules and procedures in their own communities’ – can no longer lawfully be sentenced to corporal punishment. In 2020, Sudan abolished whipping and flogging in penal institutions and as a sentence for crime, replacing whipping with probation and community service. In Saudi Arabia it was replaced with prison sentences and fines, but amputation and flogging remain lawful as a sentence for crime, including for children, under Sharia law.
Life imprisonment of children is also on the decline. Since 2008, five countries have abolished life imprisonment as a criminal sentence for children entirely, and in many countries where it remains, fewer children are serving these sentences. Globally, the sentence of life without the possibility of parole has been almost abolished for children, with the exception of some jurisdictions within the US despite Supreme Court rulings limiting its use and banning its mandatory application. Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole remains in at least 63 countries for offences committed by children, with two-thirds of these countries in the Commonwealth, demonstrating the strong legacy of the English criminal law tradition in this area.