Selected topics from 2018 The risk of routine use of coercion Being constantly followed closely by an adult (“shadowed”), being excluded from the rest of the group, or refused contact with friends and family are in themselves serious interventions in the personal integrity of children and young people. When such coercive measures become routine, the adolescents are also deprived of the due process guarantees. Such guarantees are ensured through the requirement that individual decisions shall be made in writing, and that the adolescent shall be informed about the right to appeal, and given the opportunity to appeal. Children and young people’s right to participation is also violated when force becomes routine. One of the conditions for participation is that individual assessments are based on the person concerned being heard and having had an actual opportunity to participate. Furthermore, routine coercion is a violation of the ­institutions’ obligation to work systematically to prevent the use of coercive measures. This duty concerns all types of coercion and is not limited to force used in situations of acute danger.12 Many institutions have limited awareness of their responsibility to prevent use of coercion, such as restricting freedom of movement or restricting access to electronic means of communication. The institutions are obliged to have the staff and work methods necessary to enable them to deal with the target group for which they are approved within the applicable regulatory framework.13 During our visits, we have found institutions, with the same target groups as those who use routine coercion, which have met the obligation to prevent the use coercive measures and to only use coercion when absolutely necessary. 27 Nevertheless, we experience that use of coercion is often based on a perception that rules and routines involving force, are necessary. Findings from our visits and child welfare research confirm that institutions often perceive restrictions and treatment measures with strong elements of coercion as necessary, both to the treatment of the individual youth and to the overall operation of the institution. Examples of this include the use of so-called motivational trips when rules are broken or as a form of social control, routine confiscation of mobile phones, and youth being routinely restricted to a separate part of the institution upon arrival, often for several days. In her doctoral thesis on the use of coercion in child welfare institutions, Alvestad Reime writes that staff say that they are often creative about finding leeway when they think that the Rights Regulations prevent them from doing a good job. Among other things, they describe how they take the adolescents on compulsory mountain hikes upon admission, which they themselves acknowledge can be perceived as “brutal, dramatic and problematic in relation to force”.14 Overall, our findings show that many children and young people placed in institutions are subjected to unnecessary and unjustified interventions in their ­personal integrity and that their due process protection is seriously violated. This entails a risk of degrading and inhuman treatment. The a ­ uthorities are obliged to ensure that such practices are ­discontinued. It is also important that the supervisory bodies monitor the actual practices at the institutions they supervise. 12 The Rights Regulations Section 12. 13 Cf. The Rights Regulations Section 24 and Circular Q-19/2012 Guidelines to the Regulations of 15 November 2011 relating to rights and the use of force in child welfare institutions (the Rights Regulations), p.24. 14 Monika Alvestad Reime: Children and Coercion. Recent Trends in Governing and Divergent Discourses in Residential Child Care. University of Bergen 2018, p. 113. http://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/18156/Monika%20Alvestad%20Reime_Elektronisk.pdf