We’re taking the government to court next week – here’s why…

The overriding ambition of the Howard League is to move the dial on punishment away from cruelty and towards building a more humane and effective response to crime that provides justice to all and helps to reduce reoffending.

We have a principled objection to any approach that inflicts pain on someone deliberately, and this includes the use of PAVA spray, which is classified under law as a prohibited weapon under the Firearms Act 1968. It can cause severe pain, and it should not be used on children.

Next week, we are going to the High Court for a judicial review of the government’s decision to authorise its use in three young offender institutions in England – Feltham A, Werrington and Wetherby. We believe that the decision is unlawful, on several grounds.

We are not fighting this alone. After the government announced its decision in April 2025, the Youth Justice Board, the Children’s Commissioner for England, the Independent Monitoring Boards and the British Association of Social Workers all issued critical statements in response. HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) had “serious concerns” about the move. We added our name to a joint statement signed by 37 organisations and individuals working in children’s rights and youth justice, which called the decision “an abject failure in safeguarding those children held in custody”.

This campaigning has had a significant impact, not least in terms of delaying the decision for almost two years while ministers of successive governments considered our arguments back and forth. Only a select number of staff, not all, have been authorised to use the spray.

Ultimately, however, we were left with no choice but to issue legal proceedings. Since its introduction to adult male prisons in 2018, there have been countless instances of PAVA spray being used inappropriately and not as a last resort. Moreover, official statistics for adult prisons indicate that a Black person is almost seven times more likely to be sprayed than a White person and that Muslim people are also disproportionately targeted. There is little hope that the same misuse and disproportionality will not be repeated in prisons holding children.

The government’s own impact assessment for the roll-out to children shows that Black boys are expected to be disproportionately affected by the decision, and that Muslim children are already subjected to disproportionate use of restraint. And while the government has failed to investigate properly the impact of PAVA spray on adults with disabilities in prison, it has already recognised that neurodiverse children may experience prolonged effects.

Ministers knew all this, and they still went ahead – a decision that is almost impossible to understand from a youth custody service that claims to have a “child first” approach.

Instead, the government should be taking steps to end a system that has failed children for many years. In 2013, the then coalition government announced plans to tear down Feltham and replace it with a large prison to hold adults. Six years later, it was still there and was made the subject of an urgent notification by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons because children were not safe. Now, six years further on, staff are being given PAVA spray to use against children.

Werrington and Wetherby are also failing. In October 2024, HMIP found that there had been a decade of declining quality of education in young offender institutions. In April 2025, we shared figures, obtained through FOI requests and parliamentary questions, which showed that children were typically being kept in their cells for about 20 hours a day and receiving less than 15 hours of education per week. These grim observations chime with what we hear in calls to our advice line for children and young people in custody.

PAVA spray has been authorised at a time when force is often being used against children inappropriately. Incidents reviewed by the Independent Restraint Review Panel in 2024 included 43 occasions when pain-inducing techniques were reported to have been used; the panel concluded that less than half fully met the criteria required to justify the use of such techniques.

This is the backdrop to the high levels of violence that we see in prisons holding children. The introduction of PAVA spray risks making the situation even more dangerous. Evaluation findings from adult prisons have shown that PAVA does not reduce violence and in fact has a detrimental effect on relationships between staff and the people living there.

No one should work in fear, and it is easy to see why some prison staff want action. They have been let down by a long line of politicians, who have allowed shameful conditions in custody to continue in spite of mounting evidence.

But spraying PAVA at children is not the answer. That the government has concluded otherwise is indicative of how toxic the prison system has become.

Andrea Coomber KC (Hon.)

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