10 The Sunday Times April 10, 2022NEWS
VIOLENT OFFENDERSBreach of statutory orderRobbery
Violence against the person
Other*Domestic burglaryThe share of children (under 18s) in
custody because of violence reached
a record high in 2021100%806040200*Other includes drugs and sexual offences. Source: Ministry of Justice2013 2015 2017 2019 2021Rhys Slaughter vividly recalls the
moment he arrived, aged 16, to start a
four-and-a-half-year sentence at Cook-
ham Wood young offender institution.
“I remember seeing the others and
thinking, ‘These boys are absolutely mas-
sive, I had better just keep my head
down’,” he said.
Rhys could not sleep that night. “Peo-
ple were banging, shouting, throwing
chairs at doors. I discovered prison does
not sleep.” He later witnessed a gang fight
— “It was 17 boys on three” — in the exer-
cise yard. A young boy was badly hurt.
“He was on the floor and two boys were
stamping on his head. His face was cov-
ered in red.”
Rhys had been sent to Cookham
Wood, near Rochester in Kent, for his
part in a violent robbery. By the time of
the fight, he said, he felt so bored and
desensitised that “when the alarm goes
off ... you almost enjoy watching it, it is
like entertainment”.
Ministers are now trying a new
approach to youth detention. The first
secure school for the country’s most vio-
lent child prisoners is expected to receive
royal assent this month.
The new legislation will allow a charity
to run a secure institution primarily
focused on education and restorative
justice. It is hoped it will be the first in a
network of such schools.
The move has been seen as a signal
that youth offender institutions are fail-
ing. In 2016, a report by the Youth Justice
Board for England and Wales found they
were plagued by staff shortages and ris-
ing levels of violence that made nearly
half of children feel unsafe.
It also expressed concern that child
prisoners were receiving, on average,
only 15 hours of education a week. In
2020, young offenders at an institution in
Rainsbrook, Northamptonshire, were
found to be locked up for as long as
23 hours a day, many spending most of
their days in pyjamas. Rainsbrook has
since been closed.
The new school is being built on thesite of the former Medway secure training
centre in Kent, another disgraced youth
institution, which was shut down after a
BBC Panorama documentary exposed
staff there using physical force, including
choking restraints, on children.
The new school, called Oasis Restore,
will resemble not a prison but “a really
therapeutic boarding school” for up to 50
children, boys and girls, aged 12 to
17, according to its director, Andrew
Willetts.
The school will have no cells or guards
and no bars on windows. Children will be
called students rather than inmates, and
— despite the risk that they might attack
each other — will live in 12 flats with
between four and six bedrooms.
Each flat will have its own private gar-
den, and there will also be a reflective
garden “with beautiful planting and
water features”, said Willetts, who
has worked with hundreds of young
offenders.Sian Griffiths, Tom Calver
and George WilloughbyHe added: “The rooms will look like a
child’s bedroom — they look very differ-
ent to prison.
“There are no hard metal frames,
these kids will have a bed, a mattress, a
pillow. They will have lighting they can
choose in their bedroom, and a media
console with television and radio... from
which they can do their homework
online. Children will be able to look at
photos of family. It will be almost like a
university student’s bedroom.
“Our aspirations are that we are going
to look after these children and make
sure they have a path [to jobs] beyond us,
so that they do not get caught up in the
cycle of reoffending,” Willetts said. “Most
will have committed serious youth vio-
lence, and that includes the girls. We will
also be supporting kids who have been
sentenced to life — child lifers — who have
committed murder, who will serve with
us and then move on to an adult prison.”
Willetts sees such children as prima-rily needing help. “I do not know many
kids [in the criminal justice system] who
have not been exploited or let down. We
want to build relationships based on trust
and create hope in these children’s lives,
and a sense of stability.”
Children will get up for breakfast at
7am and dress in a school uniform: a polo
shirt with a logo and trousers. They will
have a full day of learning, working
towards GCSEs as well as vocational qual-
ifications, with arts, crafts, music and
sport sessions in the evening. Children
will be locked in their rooms only at night
— from 10pm to 7am. They will also be
able to lock their own doors in the day.
Dogs will be brought in for therapy
visits. Some children will be supported
and encouraged to apologise to victims
or families of victims they have harmed.
Employers are being asked to offer
apprenticeships to the youngsters and
there are plans to allow students to gain
catering experience in a café. Celia Sadie,director of care and wellbeing at Oasis
Restore, said she and her team “want to
make it as much like a home as possible”.
A Cambridge-educated clinical psycholo-
gist, Sadie is in charge of rehabilitating
the youngsters. “The aim is not to create
a bubble where everything is made of
cotton wool, but to enable them to
re-enter society.”
This new approach echoes that taken
by other European countries. According
to Anne Longfield, the former children’s
commissioner for England, in 2015 there
were only 13 children aged 15-17 in prison
in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland and
Denmark combined. Children convicted
of offences in Scandinavian countries are
more likely to end up being ordered to
attend family counselling than they are to
go to prison.
In England, two thirds of children con-
victed of a crime go on to reoffend. The
age of criminal responsibility in Britain —
ten — is one of the lowest in the West.
David Wilson, emeritus professor of
criminology at Birmingham City Univer-
sity, said: “We lock up more children
than many other European countries.
Our children are no more criminal than
the French, Italians, Germans, Spanish
or Danish. We just choose to lock up
more of our children than our European
neighbours, and for a lot longer.”
Since 2010, the number of children in
the UK receiving a caution or a criminal
sentence has fallen by 83 per cent, and in
the year to March 2021 there were 560
children in custody at any one time,
down from 1,963 a decade earlier. Yet vio-
lent young offenders make up a growing
share. In 2012, 21 per cent of children in
custody were there because of violent
offences. By 2021, that proportion had
risen to 61 per cent.
In the secure school, restorative
justice, as well as education, will be key.
“We want to teach the children to work
through issues by talking, not violence,”
Sadie said. “All our staff will be trained to
support that process. It will feel frighten-
ing to them to face their victims in the
community and people with whom they
have longstanding enmities. It will take a
lot of energy and love and effort.”They were
locked up
for 23
hours
a dayThe aim is
to enable
them to
re-enter
societyRhys Slaughter, a
former offender,
was so bored he
was desensitised
to violenceGarden flats and flowers — boarding
school borstal is a breath of fresh air
Rather than lock up violent young offenders, the UK’s first secure school aims to rehabilitate them with home comforts and counselling
PETER TARRY FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES