ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the development of the Community Alternatives to Secure Accommodation (CASA) project in Wales: a strategically targeted policy and practice initiative to address juvenile remands in general, and juvenile custodial remands in particular. It highlights some of the policy and practice issues that comprise future developments in effectively managing juvenile remands. The chapter focuses on those recommendations concerned with reducing the need to remand young people into secure accommodation or prison custody. There are five key issues: policy statements; reviews; new initiatives; inter-agency cooperation; and information and monitoring. In 1996 the Child and Family Services Division of the Welsh Office supported an application from the Youth Crime Section of National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders and allocated funding to develop a CASA project in Wales. In reviewing the use of secure accommodation in Wales, it transpired that there were significant information and monitoring deficits within some local authorities.
