A “staggering” decline in safety at youth jails drove the chief inspector of prisons to warn ministers that none of them was safe, it emerged yesterday.
Peter Clarke revealed that he made the warning earlier this year as his annual report said that a cycle of violence in youth jails would “end in tragedy” unless urgent action was taken to end it.
Assaults and self-harm rates were double the level of six years ago and, while the reasons for the drop in standards in eight youth jails were complex, Mr Clarke’s report warned: “The current state of affairs is dangerous, counterproductive and will inevitably end in tragedy unless urgent corrective action is taken.”
He highlighted a vicious circle among under-18s: “Violence leads to a restrictive regime and security measures that in turn frustrate those being held there. We have seen regimes where boys take every meal alone in their cell, where they are locked up for excessive amounts of time, where they do not get enough exercise, education or training, and where they do not have any credible plans to break the cycle of violence.”
Self-harm rates were up to 8.9 incidents per 100 children compared with 4.1 per 100 in 2011, while assault rates were 18.9 per 100 children compared with 9.7 in 2011. Surveys showed that almost half of boys felt unsafe, Mr Clarke’s report said.
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The number of boys who reported being victimised by other inmates had risen significantly, while the proportion who were engaged in a job, vocational training and programmes to tackle their offending behaviour was lower than in 2010-11.
“Many, many staff go to work in these institutions very concerned for their own safety because levels of violence in some of them are far too high. They too have to find a way of breaking out of this cycle of violence and repression,” Mr Clarke, a former head of counterterrorism at Scotland Yard, said.
He conducted a number of inspections at secure training centres for girls and boys aged 13 to 18, and young offender institutions holding under-18s, late last year and early this year. They included Cookham Wood, Feltham and Wetherby young offender institutions, and Medway, Rainsbrook and Oakhill secure training centres.
By this February inspectors concluded that there was not a single establishment inspected in England and Wales in which it was safe to hold children and young people, the report said.
The Ministry of Justice responded to his private warning by announcing that a new youth custody service — a distinct arm of the prison service — would take over the running of the youth estate.
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Since February, Mr Clarke said, he had inspected one young offender institution that was rated reasonably good, but “there is an awful long way to go”.
The report also found that too many inmates in adult prisons in England and Wales had “utterly appalling living conditions” and that staffing levels were too low to maintain order and run decent regimes.
Conditions have seriously deteriorated and for far too many inmates “the state is failing in its duty”.
Mr Clarke said that some had described the conditions as Dickensian. “I don’t think I would dignify them with that term. In far too many places they are squalid, dirty and disgraceful,” he added.
The Ministry of Justice said that the safety and welfare of every young person in custody was an “absolute” priority: “We are clear that more needs to be done to achieve this. But we also want custody to improve the life chances of children . . . and to deliver improvements to education and health services. That’s why we have created a new youth custody service, with an executive director for the first time — to make sure this is given the priority it deserves.”