Ashfield YOI to close in response to falling custody levels
Neil Puffett
Thursday, January 10, 2013
A controversial privately run young offender institution is to stop holding under-18s as part of a prison estate shake-up announced by the Ministry of Justice today.
Ashfield YOI in Bristol, which has space for as many as 400 young offenders, will become an adult sex offender jail.
The move is part of a government drive to build new capacity to replace older adult prisons and bring down the cost of the system.
The Youth Justice Board (YJB) announced last September that it was planning to decommission YOI places due to falling custody levels.
Latest statistics show there were 1,595 under-18s in custody in October – a fall of more than 400 in 12 months, when the figure stood at 2,021.
A spokeswoman for the MoJ said a timeframe for the changes at Ashfield has yet to be decided.
The YJB has said that the final date is subject to negotiations with the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and Serco, the private firm running the prison.
The process of transferring young people to other establishments will take place in a “phased manner”, to ensure that disruption is kept to a minimum.
YJB chief executive John Drew said: “The YJB is withdrawing from Ashfield YOI in Bristol due to the continued reduction in the number of young people in custody.
“For young people at Ashfield whose sentences extend beyond the date that Ashfield will be re-roled, a planned relocation will begin, taking account of each young person’s individual needs and in consultation with their youth offending teams.”
The treatment of young people at Ashfield is currently the subject of legal proceedings. Lawyers from the Howard League for Penal Reform went to court in December to seek judicial review, claiming the YOI ran an “unlawful punishment regime”.
It is claimed that seven young men were unlawfully handed additional days in custody following a sit-in protest. The young people were also allegedly subjected to segregation, had their privileges removed and were restricted access to education and the gym. A judgment is expected by the end of the month.
Meanwhile, in July it emerged that the number of assaults at the establishment nearly doubled in the space of a year, from 526 in 2010 to 1,039 in 2011.
An unannounced inspection by the Prisons Inspectorate last February labelled use of force by staff on young people as “extremely high”, increasing since the previous inspection from an average of 17 restraints each month to almost 150 a month.
Penelope Gibbs, chair of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, said: “We are always glad to see a shrinking of the capacity of the children’s secure estate because we believe that custody should only be used for children as a last resort.
“But there are still a lot of children in prison who don’t need to be there and would be better off having community approaches used with them.”
