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UK: Child prisons planned

01 January 1991

UK: Child prisons planned

The Home Office is planning to set up a network of jails for
offenders between the ages of 15-18, following a highly critical
report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, David Ramsbotham.
Ramsbotham argued that: "The Prison Service is better suited to,
and more appropriate for, dealing with adults and that children
should no longer be its responsibility...The Prison Service should
relinquish responsibility for all children under the age of 18."
The Director General of the Prison Service, Richard Tilt, responded
to the Chief Inspector's report, Young Prisoners: a thematic
review, by announcing plans for a national network of juvenile
jails.

The Ramsbotham review, published in November, said that the
conditions faced by teenage inmates caused them damage and
increased the likelihood of their offending. The rising numbers,
combined with stringent government cost-cutting, long hours - up to
23 hours a day - in crowded cells with minimal educational
facilities resulted in conditions that are "far below the minimum
conditions in Social Services Department secure units required by
the Children Act 1989 and the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child." The Home Office plans, announced the day after the
publication of Rowbotham's report, envisage a network of seven or
eight converted juvenile jails across England and Wales, which will
house 2,600 inmates at a cost of £18 million. They will be based on
the young offenders intensive programme at Thorn Cross institution,
near Warrington, which costs £23,000 a place for a year. Under the
Warrington regime young offenders have a daily sixteen-hour
programme which begins at 6am. It includes cleaning duties, drill
education, anger management courses, physical education and working
for charity.

Young prisoners: a thematic review by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
for England and Wales, HM Inspector of Prisons. Home Office
(October) 1997; Times 20.11.97.