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Why we must close all Young Offenders Institutes |
 By Neil Williams, Respect Supporters Blog
The way young offenders (and what a label! - they are 'young people' often with multiple problems) are treated (or NOT treated as the case may be) in the UK is a national disgrace.
A few facts
Just a couple of facts from The Howard League for Penal Reform confirm the disgraceful nature of our Youth Justice system.
* England and Wales lock up more children than any other country in Western Europe (Council of Europe, 2005).
* Children in custody are serving longer sentences. The average length of an immediate custodial sentence for children aged 10-17 at Magistrate's court doubled from 3.5 months in 1995 to 6.4 months in 2005. The average length custodial sentence at crown court rose from 17.6 months to 22.1 months in the same period (Sentencing statistics England and Wales, 2005. Home office statistical bulletin 03/07)
I have spent over 32 years (until retired) working with young offenders and in this time have visited most juvenile penal establishments in Southern England and the Midlands.
How young people who offend are treated today
Most young people who seriously offend and receive a custodial sentence are locked up in Young Offender Institutes (Juvenile prisons! - they look just like you see on TV with locked cells) or Secure Training Centres (not much better than YOI's but often 'new builds' so they look better from the outside, and many are now run by private companies!).
Most cannot read or write much, have "failed" in the education system (the education system failed them!), were often thrown out of school at an early age with no one caring much about their education or what they did with their time.
Left to wander around the streets they often took up drugs and drink and then got into petty crime at 8 to 12 years old, leading on to more serious crime from 11 to 18+. This scenario is often linked to poor parenting (rather than obvious neglect), low income and bad housing, poor schooling (aimed at academic success with a 'one size fits all approach') with few, if any, good adult role models.
Their future is often bleak and depressing with no way out. Depression, loss (a parent or family member having died or a missing parent via divorce or separation) and abuse (physical and sexual) often features in the backgrounds of young people who offend. Compounding the problems and often tipping a young person over the edge into crime can be a new step-parent who is not accepted because the young person wishes to stay emotionally loyal to the 'missing' parent, with no professional help offered, if at all, until a serious crime is committed.
The other side of the coin
Not for them an education at Eton or Harrow with an assured place at university, with year after year of foreign holidays to help with the 'stress' of learning, all paid for by wealthy parents.
Not for them the weekly allowance to go clubbing at 16 to 18. Not for them the parent with the 4 by 4 car to taking them to the private tennis club and swimming pool or the private golf club/country club.
No, they have none of this in their life which is often only a life of emotional poverty and neglect from parent/s who try their best but have often had no good parental role models themselves.
The university of life
So our young people (the 'young offenders' as our New Labour government calls them) seek support, love and fun from the only source available - their gang, the streets and their peer group.
The educational "failures", minor drug users and social outcasts link together in a street culture that provides an alternative 'parent' - one that does not reject, with few rules other than gang loyalty, and provides the acceptance they crave (as we all do).
For them their 'university' is survival on the street amongst younger and older peers. What starts out as minor crime leads on to more serious crime; what starts out as minor drug use leads on to serious drug use and dealing. At each step along the way their ability to identify with the victim, to feel and to care, becomes blunted until they feel nothing for others, as they feel others care nothing for them.
Materialism
Having no car they take the BMW and Audi that belong to the parent of the Eton and Harrow students or the local grammar school kids parents, and for a few minutes, an hour or two they are part of the 'haves' instead of the 'have not' that they know our rotten system has placed them in.
They fight in the only way they know, to grab a bit of the action and material life style for themselves at any cost to themselves, their families and their communities. It is the logic of capitalism, the logic of the jungle.
Not having 'connections', wealthy parents, country clubs, top private schools and universities, flash cars and clothes or money they still feel that these are the things that matter in life, as this material life style is what they see on TV every day. By hook or by crook they decide, often without being consciously aware, they are not going to be left behind in life as a 'loser' (does anyone?).
Failure
It is we, society, that has failed - failed to equip them with an education to survive in our cut throat capitalist world and failed to change the very nature of our society for one in which there would be 'no failures' as children.
Failed to give them the 'right' mother or father with money, connections, aspirations and expectations with the income to support them.
They are the losers in the lottery of our capitalist system and they know it and fight back in an individualist dog eat dog way, that for brief moments when they have had that cannabis joint, or ride in that stolen BMW or swallow the contents of a bottle of whiskey from the last ram raid job, makes them feel just as good as you and me.
And in the depressive low after the high of the night before they know that they will have to do it all over again and again. Not for them the ongoing high of a university place, the 'gap' year subsidised by mummy and daddy or their first car bought by father/mother out of the small change from that year's share dividends or company bonus.
Throwing the key way
So what do we do with these needy young people when their luck runs out and they are hauled before the Youth Courts for the more serious crimes (no doubt after many weeks if not months on bail during which none of the key issues are addressed)?
We lock them all up together where they often become more disturbed, bullied and abused. They learn to become 'hard and tough' to survive, and then we wonder why they have not changed when they are released.
Time after time I came across young people of school age who received no education, or trade training at places like Feltham YOI (or if lucky two hours' education a day), or drug counselling or counselling of any type due to staff shortages or lack of trained staff.
The whole emphasis was always on warehousing these young people and despite the best attempts of some staff their real needs went unaddressed which were often just the need for basic eduction to read and write or counselling to discuss abuse both inside and outside the family or to kick their drug habit.
I came to believe that Young Offender Institutes were what they looked - prisons for children where they could be warehoused and the key thrown way as far as the rest of society was concerned. What the rest of society had forgotten was that someday one of these young people was going to be released at an address near them and they were going to be angry, very angry.
Work
The prospects for real well-paid work for these young people at 16 (soon to be 18, which will compound the problem for these young people) are slim indeed and it is not surprising therefore that many slip back into the well worn and comfortable habits of petty crime, minor and serious drug dealing and taking, living a life of going to bed late (after watching videos taking drink and drugs to blunt the pain of a dull life going no where) and getting up late (to kill time).
We, my friends, live in a society that cares nothing for the blighted lives of 1000's of our damaged children. Shame on us, shame on all of us.
Often these young people have real potential that has never been seen or brought out of them. The one thing that was certain was that their needs were not going to be met in our custody system - a disgrace to any civilised society.
We are not reforming young offenders but grooming them in our current penal system, a world where dog eats dog and being 'hard' and lacking feeling is seen as the way to survive - these are the lessons they learn in their 'universities of crime'.
Reform
We must start to reform this juvenile penal system by making sure no juvenile of 16 or under is EVER locked up in secure establishment unless it is for the most serious crimes (such as murder), when significant specialist help (psychiatry, psychology, counselling, education) must be provided so that upon release these very damaged young people are not a danger to themselves and others.
For the vast majority of other young offenders committing the more serious crimes, community-based schemes providing basic education, work experience, role modelling by a caring adult 'uncle' or 'aunt' figures, sports training, community service and victim awareness (working for the victim of the crime or other victims to an agreed contract and face to face meetings if agreed by the victim) and counselling will do far better than any penal establishment.
These young people need to both feel real remorse and sorrow for their actions as well as to feel a valuable part of society with real prospects of education or work on a liveable wage.
Paying back to society and learning to re-engage with society and communities is harder, much harder than a prison sentence (ask any young person who offends). Being made aware of the pain they have caused others and being asked to put this right can produce a profound positive change in a young person. Having completed a community sentence and having found work or education, with the caring but firm adult guidance they clearly need, many young people are once again able to feel part of a community that has not turned their back on them and rejected them as failures while still juveniles - this is real rehabilitation.
Another way for the hard-to-change
Where needed well-paid, professional foster parents (yes it's their occupation, not a hobby), along with a clear contract of responsibilities for the young person concerned, for those most in need, after sentence or on bail, for limited periods should be provided (working alongside the real parent/s and other professionals) - a system that has been tried and tested and does work in the UK.
A better way forward
Yes there are better ways of preventing serious youth crime than locking young people up and throwing the key away, ways that allows a young person to feel valued and loved and part of their family, their community and a valued member of society - a real human being once again!
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