The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
A failing children’s prison will be closed down, in the wake of a Tortoise investigation which showed high levels of prison officer sackings and accounts of boys being locked in their cells for up to 23.5 hours a day in effective solitary confinement. Last Spring, Cookham Wood Young Offender Institution in Kent was subject to a damning report by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons. An urgent notice was sent directly to the justice secretary, to emphasise inspectors’ alarm at the living conditions for the boys while on remand or serving a custodial sentence. A subsequent report described the boys’ situation as “regularly inhumane”. The government now plans to disperse this mix of violent and traumatised children across the youth prison estate. But good options appear to be limited.