240 children in police custody overnight due to accommodation shortage
More than 240 children were forced to spend the night in custody over the past 12 months, official new West Midlands Police figures have revealed.
Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) David Jamieson has blasted local councils after it emerged that a total of 244 children had to spend the night locked in a police cell due to a lack of suitable alternative accommodation.
He says it shows that local authorities were failing in their duty to find suitable accommodation for youngsters who have been accused of a crime.
The West Midlands does not have a single secure unit, and the closest available accommodation is often in Swansea or Manchester.
Mr Jamieson has vowed to press councils across the region to redress the balance.
“I will be raising this important issue with local authorities to ensure that secure accommodation for children is provided," he told delegates at this week's Strategic Policing and Crime Board meeting.
“It is a statutory responsibility of local authorities that needs to be rapidly progressed.
“It is not acceptable for there to be no secure accommodation for children in the West Midlands. On some occasions the nearest secure accommodation is south Wales.
“It shows that the local authorities in this region have really got to step up to the plate here and start doing something.
“They’re placing the burden on the police when the burden actually lies with the local authorities’ social services department.”
Under Government legislation called PACE, custody officers have a duty to transfer children who have been remanded in custody to local authority accommodation.
This can be a ‘secure bed’, where the child is kept in a secure unit, or a PACE bed, which can see the child placed in foster care.
The type of placement allocated to the child depends on the risk to the public or individual, but if no place is found they may end up in a police cell.
In the period from April 2017 to March 2018 a total of 111 requests for PACE beds were made by West Midlands Police, but only 19 were provided.
Requests were also made for 155 secure beds in the same time period, with only 10 being provided. In the remaining seven cases a request was not properly made by staff.
