Howard League goes to High Court for judicial review of PAVA spray decision

WHEN: Tuesday 9 December and Wednesday 10 December 2025
WHERE: Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, WC2A 2LL

The government’s decision to authorise the use of PAVA spray in prisons holding children will be challenged in the High Court this week, in a judicial review following legal action by the Howard League for Penal Reform. The hearing is listed for two days, starting on Tuesday 9 December.

PAVA is a chemical irritant spray that can cause severe pain. It is classified as a prohibited weapon under the Firearms Act 1968. The Ministry of Justice announced in April that it would authorise the use of PAVA spray in three prisons in England, holding boys as young as 15 – Feltham A, Werrington and Wetherby – for a 12-month period.

The Howard League submits that the decision was unlawful because the Secretary of State for Justice failed to understand and investigate sufficiently:

• the physical and psychological damage that PAVA spray will cause to children in custody;
• the likely discriminatory use of PAVA spray against Black and minority ethnic children, Muslim children and children with disabilities; and
• whether introducing PAVA spray would increase violence and cause more harm overall.

Andrea Coomber KC (Hon.), Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “Arming staff with PAVA spray risks making the situation in prisons holding children 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.

“Instead, ministers should be taking steps to end a system that has failed children for many years. In 2013, there were plans to tear down Feltham. Six years later, it was still there and being 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, in Feltham and other failing prisons.

“This is a terrible decision that will put more people in harm’s way.”

The Howard League is not alone in opposing the government’s decision. The Youth Justice Board, the Children’s Commissioner for England, the Independent Monitoring Boards and the British Association of Social Workers have all issued critical statements in response. HM Inspectorate of Prisons had “serious concerns” about the move. The Howard League added its 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 arguments back and forth. Only a select number of staff, not all, have been authorised to use the spray.

Ultimately, however, the Howard League was 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.

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.

The Howard League is concerned by the lack of research into PAVA spray’s use in custody – and against children, whether in the community or in custody. What little research exists in relation to adults shows myriad potential physiological health impacts, including on the respiratory tract, eyes, skin and cardiovascular system.

Using PAVA spray on children in prison, who are more likely to have experienced trauma than other children, can be expected to cause severe psychological harm.

The Howard League has asked two clinical psychologists with considerable experience of working with children in the youth justice system to summarise the available evidence on using PAVA spray on children in prison.

They have explained that there is no research into the health implications of using PAVA spray on children in secure settings, but that there are a number of reasons why it is likely to have “an array of negative psychological and physical health consequences”.

They specify further research that could be done to understand this adverse impact, as well as the impact on levels of violence as a result of introducing PAVA spray into prisons holding children, before deciding to use it.

Notes to editors

1. The Howard League for Penal Reform is the oldest penal reform charity in the world. It is a national charity working for less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison.
2. More information about PAVA spray and its use against children can be found here.
3. The Howard League has launched a campaign on CrowdJustice to challenge the government’s decision and protect children from harm. Find it here.
4. The Howard League is among dozens of signatories to a statement published by the Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ), opposing the government’s decision and setting out the significant risks this measure poses to children’s safety and wellbeing.
5. The Howard League submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Ministry of Justice, asking for the total number of people who have been affected by PAVA spray being drawn and used against them since the rollout of PAVA spray in prisons. The charity asked for the figures to be broken down by age and disaggregated further by ethnicity. The response can be found here.
6. The Howard League submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Ministry of Justice, asking for the number of people in prison, broken down by age and religion, who have been affected by PAVA spray being drawn and used against them. The response can be found here.
7. The Faculty of Forensic & Legal Medicine (FFLM) has prepared medico-legal guidelines, which summarise the current understanding of the medical implications of irritant sprays such as PAVA spray.
8. In April 2025, the Howard League 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.
9. In October 2024, HM Inspectorate of Prisons found that there had been a decade of declining quality of education in young offender institutions.
10. The Howard League is represented by Adam Straw KC, Shu Shin Luh and Shanthi Sivakumaran of Doughty Street Chambers, instructed by Michael Oswald and Catriona McGregor of Bhatt Murphy Solicitors.

Contact

Rob Preece
Communications Manager
Tel: +44 (0)7714 604955
Email: [email protected]