Preface 

Young Prisoners: A Thematic Review by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales

October 1997

Terms of Reference:
To review the conditions for and the treatment of young prisoners aged between 15 - 21 who are held in Prison Service custody. The review will distinguish between conditions and treatment of children and those aged 18 and over. It will also distinguish between convicted and unconvicted young prisoners in both age groups.
 
 

YOUNG PRISONERS - PREFACE

Despite the welcome addition of £43m for this year and next, currently the Prison Service is virtually overwhelmed by the competing pressures of a rapidly rising. population and a reduction in the resources available in existing establishments to deal with continuous detailed day to day realities. Inspections, inevitably, highlight the impact of these pressures on individual establishments, and many of my recommendations, while aimed at helping establishments improve their operational efficiency, are directed at Prison Service management, which is responsible for providing, or trying to obtain, the resources necessary to alleviate them. As I have inspected establishments holding similar types of prisoner, I have became more and more aware of, and concerned about, inconsistencies between them in the treatment and conditions of prisoners. These seem to depend not so much on what Prison Service Operating Standards say should be done, to tackle a prisoner’s offending behaviour for example, but on the resources made available to whichever prison, in whichever part of the country, a prisoner may be serving his or her sentence. This inconsistency has been increased by the Prison Service practice of allocating percentage financial cuts to individual Governors, for them to determine how they will apply them in their own establishment, rather than by laying down policy direction as to how they should be applied so that they affect all prisons of a similar kind equally. I have commented on this in many reports, because of its impact on the treatment and conditions of prisoners.

Thinking through the results and implications, of both the pressures and the way in which cuts are imposed, led me to consider how the Inspectorate could best contribute to helping the Prison Service restore and maintain consistency in its treatment of the prisoners committed to its charge. I concluded that the most effective way of influencing, and hopefully encouraging, improvements was by drawing attention to particular problem areas by undertaking open, independent, informed, and constructive examinations, in which our experiences could be used to best advantage, and our findings and recommendations reported to the public through the Home Secretary and the Minister of Prisons. Therefore, with the full agreement of the Home Secretary and the Director General of the Prison Service, we have embarked on a series of studies into these areas of concern, beginning with our discussion document on Health Care "Patient or Prisoner" in November 1996, followed by our study on "Women in Prison" published in July 1997.

But, of all the parts of the Prison Service that we inspect, the one that gives all of us in the Inspectorate greatest cause for concern is the Young Prisoner estate. By Young Prisoner the Prison Service means those between the ages of 15 and 21, the group being further broken down into juveniles (15-17) and Young Adults (18-21), both convicted and unconvicted. Few subjects engage public attention and anger more than the criminal behaviour of young people, mainly male, which is alleged to cost the country over 21 billion per year, and the victims between S2 and I3 billion. These are huge sums that no society can tolerate, and so it is hardly surprising that more and more punitive measures are advocated to try to discipline and wean unruly young people away from such activities.

Our concerns have concentrated on the treatment and conditions of the increasing numbers of young people who end up in prison, where they are on the receiving end of the conditions which I have outlined above. Overcrowding has led to too many Governors having to breach Prison Service Operating Standards, by doubling up young people in cells which are below the minimum certified size for new establishments or refurbished parts of them. But, even worse, are the effects of resource cuts to regime activities, which mean that far too many are left locked up in their cells for far too long, because, in common with too many parts of the adult estate, there are not sufficient staff or instructors or facilities to occupy them fully. The treatment of young prisoners is something of a lottery, because it depends on conditions available in the establishment in which they are confined, as well as different attitudes towards them amongst some staff. This means that the few really good establishments, where young offenders are treated properly, stand out in sharp contrast to the majority where, despite the obvious wish and motivation of many excellent staff, conditions and resources are against them. I believe that if young prisoners are to be engaged by regimes, they must be convinced that the challenges and demands that are made are relevant not only to their needs, rectifying deficiencies in their previous upbringing, but offer them genuine hope of better things resulting from their training. These regimes should therefore be based on a full, purposeful and active day, such as is being provided in the two establishments, Colchester and Thorn Cross, which were given sufficient funds by the previous government, to conduct pilot schemes which are validating this belief. Examples of inequities in current resource allocation, which inhibit the replication of such regimes elsewhere, are spelled out in detail in the report.

Therefore, because of our increasing concern, and following our discovery of some examples of unacceptable conditions, we embarked on a study of young people in prison, again with the full agreement of the Home Secretary and the Director General. Here I must point out that in establishment after establishment we found that Governors and staff alike felt deeply and strongly about the circumstances in which they were being forced to look after young, vulnerable and impressionable adolescents. Of course some young people have committed horrific crimes, for which there can be no excuse, and from whom society must be protected. The Prison Service is trying its hardest, within the resource constraints it is under, to keep young prisoners out of police cells. I pay due tribute, unhesitatingly, to the dedication and work of many staff in institutions, without whom the overall situation for young prisoners would, undoubtedly, be worse.

But much of the inconsistency seems to the Inspectorate to be due to the fact that there is no one person responsible, and accountable, for the consistent delivery of regimes in every establishment in which young people are held. I have advocated such an appointment in report after report, and I know that lack of direction - which is not to criticise individual Area Managers, who are responsible for overseeing many prisons of different types in their areas - is a concern of many Governors. After a life-time in an operational service, where functional direction was a key ingredient in maintaining consistent standards in each part of the whole, I must press for this recommendation to be considered and actioned as a matter of urgency. I know that the appointment will make the task of the Director General easier, because he will be able  to delegate accountable responsibility for a major part of his estate, and that it will make possible a proper evaluation of resource requirements, which such an appointee will need to make to fully understand his problems, as well as ensuring that someone with operational authority can speak for and represent the Prison Service in forums of senior officials from other Agencies responsible for Youth Justice policy and practice.

I believe, very strongly, that not only is the current ‘demeaning’ attitude and approach to young offenders, such as appears frequently in certain sections of the popular media, very dangerous, because of the effect it is bound to have on them as they grow up, but also that there is no justification for any cynicism about the treatment of young people in custody. The only raw material that every nation on earth has in common is its people, and woe betide any that does not do everything it can to identify, nurture and develop their talents. YOs may have lost their way in society, but that does not mean that they are without talents which can be turned to advantage - their’s and the nation's - given proper encouragement. Young prisoners will return to the community, and therefore it really does matter how they are treated in prison. The choice is ours. Either we can give them education, to make good the ravages of what they have denied themselves by truancy or been denied by exclusion, and opportunities for personal development within a structured, caring environment - which many have been denied in the chaotic circumstances of their home lives - which we implicitly hold to be the way that can best lead to the development of responsible citizens, or we can continue on our present course, with all the damage that that is doing not only to the young people themselves but to the society to which they will return.

It is a great pity that all too much informed and concerned discussion and recommendation about dealing with delinquent young people stops at the prison gates, ignoring what goes on behind them and the effect of this on those who emerge through them at the end of their sentence. As soon as one embarks on an exercise such as this, one notices the absence of effective guidelines or standards underpinning the treatment of young people in prison, as distinct from adults, to whom all policy seems to relate. True, the mission given to Young Offender Institutions, in their separate Rules is:

‘..to help offenders to prepare for their return to the outside community’.
but its achievement is undermined by present realities.

I believe that what goes on with young people in prisons and young offender institutions should no longer be conducted or considered in isolation from the remainder of the Criminal Justice System (CJS). It is the acute part, appropriate for those whose crime, or persistent behaviour suggests that incarceration is unavoidable. But, in the same way that hospitals represent the acute part of the NHS, where what is done for an individual is a multidisciplinary operation based on careful needs assessment, so do prisons represent the acute part of the CJS. Both needs assessment and operation must be based on all available information about what has happened to the individual before admission, and the details of treatment, the response to treatment, and information about future needs, must be passed on to those responsible for aftercare in the community.

Therefore I believe that the Prison Service should be closely integrated with those parts of the CJS which have responsibilities for young people aged 15-21 in the community- Probation, Social Services, colleges and voluntary agencies - so that there may be closer co-operation and coordination in meeting their needs in the community, in custody and on release. Only if all agencies work together is there a realistic chance of reducing offending. What happens in custody for young offenders must not be allowed to become separated from what happens in the community. The acid test of this will be that an offender's total record moves with  Service is trying its hardest, within the resource constraints it is under, to keep young prisoners out of police cells. I pay due tribute, unhesitatingly, to the dedication and work of many staff in institutions, without whom the overall situation for young prisoners would, undoubtedly, be worse. But much of the inconsistency seems to the Inspectorate to be due to the fact that there is no one person responsible, and accountable, for the consistent delivery of regimes in every establishment in which young people are held. I have advocated such an appointment in report after report, and I know that lack of direction - which is not to criticise individual Area Managers, who are responsible for overseeing many prisons of different types in their areas - is a concern of many Governors. After a lifetime in an operational service, where functional direction was a key ingredient in maintaining consistent standards in each part of the whole, I must press for this recommendation to be considered and actioned as a matter of urgency. I know that the appointment will make the task of the Director General easier, because he will him, wherever he goes in the system, with no one keeping anything back from others who need to know and can use it with advantage. If anyone should accuse me of being idealistic about the possibilities of this, I refer them to what is happening now in Massachusetts, where all organisations dealing with juvenile delinquency work together, under one Director. I have spent a day with them, and know what can be achieved, given the willingness of individual agencies to surrender some of their sovereignty in the interests of providing an aggregated service to the community. All to whom I spoke said that they had had no idea what could be achieved, or what waste of resources could be curbed, until they learned to co-operate.

Notwithstanding this example and returning to the different groups of young people in custody mentioned earlier, I do not believe that children under 18 should be held in prison. This could and should be the cut-off age for a separate Youth Justice framework which incorporates custodial and community disposals for children who offend against the law. The Prison Service is essentially an organisation for adults, neither structured nor equipped to deal with children. It is the plight of children that alarms us most, not least because of the conditions in which they are held in Prison Service establishments. These are the only conditions which the Prison Service is resourced to provide, but, in many cases they 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. Indeed I can find no evidence that the Prison Service has acknowledged the Children Act 1989 as having any relevance to children held in Prison Service establishments. More damage is done to immature adolescents than to any other type of prisoner, by current conditions. The vast majority of young people in custody need individual attention given to the problems which produced their criminal behaviour. If all they get is akin to being stored in a warehouse, then the chances of their re-offending, creating yet more victims, is very great indeed. Let me emphasise that what I am advocating for these children is not a soft option. Changing the attitudes and behaviour of many of the young criminals who end up in custody requires tough challenging regimes run by very skilled staff. But unless they receive individual attention and opportunities to change, their time in custody will make them worse rather than better.

It may seem strange to begin a report with recommendations, but I must draw attention to three, which stand out above all others in my estimation:

• For all children under the age of 18 to be removed from prison and into a separate Youth Justice framework combining the activities of all agencies with responsibilities for them in the community.
• For the Prison Service to appoint a Director of Young Prisoners to ensure consistency of regime delivery wherever young prisoners are held in the system.
• For the Director, and the Service, to conduct an urgent examination of Prison Service Operating Standards for young people in custody, based on the provision of regimes built around a full, purposeful and active day, and to make appropriate recommendations to Ministers regarding resource provision.

Inevitably this is a long and detailed report, and I realise that not everyone will want to read all of it at once. I have therefore included a reading guide, suggesting that, for example, anyone wanting to know about our main recommendations might read this Preface followed by Chapters Eight and Nine, and that Chapter Four is written in the style of an action plan for whoever is appointed - as I hope that they will be - Director of Young Prisoners. But, just as inevitably, such reports only result from the devoted hard work of a number of individuals, and it would be wholly inappropriate of me not to acknowledge them, and pay tribute to the amount of time and effort they have devoted to the task, over and above their other responsibilities.

Firstly I must mention my Deputy, Mr Colin Allen, without whose determination, leadership, enthusiasm and skill, this report would have neither appeared nor been possible. His own experience in the old Borstal System, in which so much that is good in the treatment of young prisoners was developed and learned, prepared him for the task, but his distress that the Service he has served so well is unable to deliver what it so clearly could, were it adequately trained and resourced, to so many needy and vulnerable young people, has been a most tangible motivating factor. I am most grateful to my colleague, Sir Herbert Laming, HM Chief Inspector of Social Services, for making one of his inspectors, Mr Paul Clark, available to us for the duration of the study. His wisdom, experience, advice and companionship, have been major and invaluable ingredients in our work. He, too, was clearly moved by what he saw happening - or not happening - in Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) and local prisons, and his determination to help in bringing about improvements has been another important motivating factor. Finally, in this group, I must mention firstly Mr Simon Boddis, formerly my Principal Psychologist, until he was required for another Prison Service post, and secondly Dr Silvia Casale, who volunteered to stand in for him, working on this project, until his successor was appointed. Mr Boddis’s early contributions, and his continued involvement and interest, have been perceptive and positive, and I am grateful to him for maintaining contact with us, motivated by his own deep concern about the problems facing young prisoners. Dr Casale joined Mr Allen and Mr Clark in the editing team. As with her earlier involvement with our thematic study "Women in Prison", no praise can be too high for the quality, quantity and method of her contribution. Time and again she has come up with some telling point or observation, based on both her experience and her concern, and her infectious determination to see the project through, on top of all her other work, has been quite invaluable.

Within the Inspectorate Mr Rod Jacques, and his Alpha team, have carried out all inspections of young offender institutions over the past eighteen months, and the depth and care with which these have been conducted has been reflected in the immense contribution that he, Mr Peter Clarke, Mrs Ruth Whitehead and Mr Mark Howell, in particular, have made both in drafting chapters of the report, and in our discussions. This caring approach has typified the conduct of all the visits that they have carried out to other establishments holding young people. I am also most grateful to my two medical inspectors, Dr John Reed and Mrs Maggi Lyne, for their tireless involvement, not just with Chapter Five but with the whole venture, and to my colleague Mr Chris Woodhead, who released one of his OFSTED inspectors, Mrs Marie Christie, to help in our examination of educational opportunities. Again she quickly integrated into our team, and gave us much wise advice and observation. Our two research assistants, Miss Susan Davies and Miss Rachael Ellis, designed the methodology, conducted all interviews with young prisoners and are responsible for Chapter Three. Experienced psychologists, and others, have paid tribute to the very high quality of their work, which represents a unique data base for future work. All have been tireless in working all hours, on top of their inspection programme, to meet tight deadlines, convinced of the importance of what they were doing, and I could not have asked for better support. I must also give tribute to Miss Susan Abigail, who has typed countless drafts of parts of the report many times, with accuracy and speed.

Finally, I must thank the Director General and the Governors and staffs of all the establishments which we have visited, all of whom, without exception, have given unstinting help to me and my teams, have provided full and frank responses to our questions, and have co-operated in every possible way with our work. I thank Mr Nick Brooke, Governor of HMYOI Portland and Mr David Waplington, formerly Governor of HMYOI Lancaster Farms and now of HMP and YOI Moorland, in particular, for helping in the essential formulation of our expectations for this study.

But, as I said earlier, without the devotion and work of staff the plight of young people would be far worse. They, and all young people in prison, deserve the treatment and conditions which they are currently denied in all too many cases. The recent concentration on security, spawned by the Woodcock and Learmont reports, has improved the delivery of the custody part of the Prison Service mission statement enormously, while resource cuts have affected the delivery of regimes designed to tackle re-offending. I believe that a similar concentration on tackling re-offending, by examining the way in which is done before merely appealing for or applying additional financial resources, would improve that part equally. It is experience of custody should be put to maximum advantage. on behalf of the public, who would, I am sure, prefer them to return to society less likely to re-offend, and better equipped to live law-abiding lives in future, that I recommend this report to those who have the responsibility of enabling this to happen.
 
 
 

CONTENTS 

READERS GUIDE TO THE THEMATIC REVIEW

If your interest is to understand my conclusions I refer you to the preface, the text of Chapter Eight and major conclusions in Chapter Nine.

If you are interested in following the logic of my argument I hope you will find it in Chapters One, Two and Three.

Those interested in the details of recommended regime practice for young prisoners will find them in Chapter Four.

For a review of health care see Chapter Five.

Particular issues concerning young women are in Chapter Six.

Major recommendations to the Secretary of State and the Director General of the Prison Service are grouped together in Chapter Nine.

Other recommendations are emboldened in the text.

Terminology used in this report
Throughout this review young prisoners are referred to by use of the masculine pronoun. This reflects the fact that young males are in the majority and in no way implies that young women are any less important. Chapter Six is concerned exclusively with the treatment and management of young women.

The word "children" has been adopted from the Children Act 1989, and refers directly to those under 18 years of age.

The phrase "young prisoners" is used to describe those under the age of 22, whether convicted or unconvicted.

The phrase "young offender" refers to those who have been tried and convicted in court.

The phrase "young adults" refers to those aged 18 - 21.

Young Offender Institutions (Yols) is the term used to describe designated establishments run under the Young Offender Institution Rules 1988, as amended.

Prisons, when referred to in this report are local prisons, in which, in general, prisoners are held while awaiting trial and sentence.

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