Detention As A Last Resort? An Interrogation Of The Policy And Practice Of The Decarceration Of Irish Children And Young People

• In Event: Juvenile Justice 2. Children in the Justice System

Abstract

Detention “...shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time” (UNCRC Art. 37[b]), a phrase in many domestic and international policy documents and one repeated in criminal and youth justice lectures across academia, but what does it actually mean? How, or even has, it been incorporated into philosophy or practice?

On June 30th, 1960, there were approximately 4000 children and young people confined to 51 children detention schools in Ireland (DoE, 1960). By June 2020 there were just 45 present in a single children detention campus (Oberstown, 2020). This was also a period where the daily average prison population for Adults in Ireland notably rose from approximately 460 in 1960 to 3,824 in 2020 (O’Donnell et al., 2005; IPS, 2021). The explanation for the lack of supply of children for detention schools and the evolution of a parallel youth justice system in Ireland is multifactorial, however, a production of knowledge redefined the Irish child as a distinct bearer of rights.

This paper tracks the development of the notion of detention as a last resort in Ireland as it began to permeate criminal and youth justice policy and practice, accumulating in the formalisation of the Garda (Police) Diversion Programme and its statutory provision in the Children Act 2001. However, this paper also challenges the very notion of detention as a last resort. Cementing the default position of detention and that the alternative is an alternative, detention as a last resort as principle describes that placing children in detention should only be considered after all other possible alternatives have been exhausted. Therefore, what does that mean for the children and young people, such as repeat offenders or children with complex needs, who have not experienced the trends of decarceration equally?

Author

• Áine Bernadette Mannion, University College Cork