Children in Custody- History repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce

In March 1993, then Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke announced plans for new Secure Training Centres (STC) to deal with the “comparatively small group of very persistent juvenile offenders whose repeated offending makes them a menace to the community”. The Centres aimed to provide “high standards of care and discipline and opportunities for the juveniles in their care to develop as individuals”. Regimes were intended to “embrace education and training provided in ways that tackle the individual's offending behaviour”.

More than five years passed before the first trainees, one boy and one girl, arrived at the newly built Medway STC in April 1998, with a steady increase into the summer. Within three months, police in full riot gear accompanied by dogs were called to quell a riot in which a dozen or so trainees armed with makeshift weapons caused injuries to staff and damage to the building.  Within six months 30% of the original staff had left.  

The inauspicious start ushered what can only be described as a chequered history for the STCs. Clarke’s promise that “secure training orders will be different from anything that has ever been provided before” turned out to be hubristic nonsense. Approved schools, Detention Centres, Borstals, Youth Treatment Centres and Young Offender Institutions had all started with high hopes and proved more or less expensive failures.

Fast forward 18 years to December 2016 to find then Justice Secretary Liz Truss telling MPs that the government will “comprehensively transform youth custody by developing two new secure schools” following recommendations made in Charlie Taylor’s Youth Justice Review.  Two quickly became one but last summer the Oasis Charitable Trust were selected to run the secure school – where else but Medway. The original plan was to open in September this year; but last November a delay until 2021 was confirmed.  

This week Prisons Minister Lucy Frazer informed the Justice Committee that the government expects to open the Medway secure school in 2022- which means the beginning of the school year- almost six years after Taylor’s review.

The reason for the delay is ostensibly “to work through some significant and complex legal and regulatory issues.” These arose after Frances Crook at the Howard League questioned whether running a secure school falls within the charitable purposes listed in the Charities Act 2011.The Charity Commission does not think that the operation of a secure school can be exclusively charitable.

This may be one reason why - unless I have missed it- the government has not yet published the application submitted by Oasis Charitable Trust . They aimed to do so by September 2019 in keeping with their commitment to be as transparent as possible.  

It’s also the case that the Medway site, which closed as an STC in the spring, has been pressed into service to accommodate up to 70 adult male prisoners during the current pandemic.  Justice Secretary Robert Buckland told the Justice Committee this week that 32 of the single cells are currently in use. The emergency use of Medway as an annexe to HMP Rochester may have delayed the 5 million pounds worth of planned refurbishment works designed to make the site suitable for the secure school.

In the light of all this, Ms Frazer’s claim that the government is dedicated to the secure schools programme looks somewhat flaky. It is entirely possible that it will go the same way as the Coalition’s absurd plan for a large Secure College – nowhere.

Last week’s reports on pain inducing restraint and separation in custodial establishments left no doubt about the need for reform in youth custody.  They were but the latest illustration of what amounts to  a huge strategic failure over 25 years.

A sensible approach would have been to build more secure childrens homes which offer by far the best level of care in the estate and phase out prison custody which provides the worst. Secure Training Centres – despite the rhetoric surrounding their introduction - have proved a costly distraction and there is a risk that the secure school – if it ever happens -may prove the same.