Cookham Wood: Youth suffer most from prison system that is full to bursting

The UK’s lead inspector for children’s prisons says a young offenders’ institution inspected earlier this month is “not safe enough” for the boys incarcerated there.

This matters anyway, but especially now since the inspection – and a report due in June – follow the government’s announcement of the closure of another children’s prison, Cookham Wood, meaning the Youth Custody Service must now urgently find places for around 80 vulnerable and volatile teenage boys.

One possible alternative was Feltham Young Offenders Institution, but Angus Jones, the inspector, told Tortoise: “We were in Feltham last week and it’s gone backwards.”

Where will they go?

Government inspectors have assessed all four of the remaining children’s prisons over the past year. According to Jones, “all of them are struggling”.

“We only said one YOI was safe enough,” he said.

Jones’ concern now is that many of the boys to be moved out of Cookham Wood will be transferred to Feltham, Werrington and Wetherby YOIs. All are failing, with a mixture of unstable leadership, sick and demoralised staff and significant human rights concerns due to high levels of violence and self-harm, and the effective solitary confinement of children who can be locked in their cells for up to 23.5 hours per day.

Asked if the arrival of dozens of boys with complex needs at these already failing YOIs would put staff there under pressure, Jones said: “Yes, and it will put the children under pressure too. In the same way that you wouldn’t want to disrupt placements of children in care, you don’t want to disrupt the placement of children who are in YOIs.

“If these boys were going somewhere better, into a different type of institution that would be positive, that’s one thing, but the depressing thing is this will be another move for many boys who will have already in their lives moved from institution to institution lots of times.”

A new “secure school” suggested by the government as a possible destination for boys after Cookham Wood shuts down is not yet open for business – and Jones noted that the school’s intention to accept a maximum of eight children per month means it can’t be a solution for most of the Cookham Wood cohort.

Why now?

The country’s adult prisons are full to bursting. It’s generally acknowledged that the male prison estate is beyond capacity and well past crisis point. The closure of Cookham Wood YOI conveniently frees up a whole new prison which the government has stated will now be used to relieve the dangerous pressures building up in the overcrowded male prison population.

Are children being sacrificed to make space for adult male offenders? “The big issue is that even in the [government] press release, [the closure of Cookham Wood] is at least in part driven by the needs of another group of prisoners, not driven by the needs of children,” Jones says.

There is no question that the UK’s prison service needs more space for adults. But it also needs “a coherent plan to improve the support that can be offered to these children so they can go on to lead crime-free lives”.