MPs question secure school delays
Joe Lepper
Thursday, February 11, 2021
MPs have questioned delays in government plans to develop secure schools for young offenders.
The government is looking to launch two secure schools instead of incarcerating young offenders in Youth Offenders Institutions (YOI) and Secure Training Centres (STC).
The first secure school, on the site of the Medway STC in Kent, was due to open later this year. But this has been delayed until December 2022.
Members of the Justice Committee said they welcomed the government’s focus on secure schools “but the repeated delay in setting up even the first school, planned for Medway, is of significant concern”.
MPs concerns have been revealed in its latest report into the youth secure estate for England and Wales.
They call for clarity on the opening of the first secure school in Medway, how it is being resourced and also when further schools will open. The government has planned to create a second secure school covering the north of England.
Our second report about children and young people in custody raises concerns about the delay in opening the first secure school.
— Justice Committee (@CommonsJustice) February 10, 2021
We call on the @MoJGovUK to guarantee that it opens in 2022.
Read the report on our website: https://t.co/QVwx1LCRuj pic.twitter.com/pX5FVkvw8h
Justice Committee chair Bob Neill, Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, said that the committee agrees with the concept of secure schools to support children and is “better than trying to bring education into inappropriate youth prison settings”.
“But why is it taking so long for the secure schools plan to get off the ground? It is already five years since the original commitment to build them. We strongly recommend – and call on the Ministry of Justice to guarantee - that the first secure school will open in 2022," he added.
The first secure school, in Medway, is to be run by the Oasis Charitable Trust. In October last year Trust founder Steve Chalke said the secure school will deliver a “long awaited revolution in youth justice”. Around 150 staff are to be recruited to run the school.
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman confirmed that the Medway school is “ready to open” in 2022.
“Secure schools are a revolutionary approach to youth custody and no successful revolution happens overnight,” she said.
“Work on the first one in Kent is well underway and we are working closely with Oasis Charitable Trust so that it is ready to open at the end of next year.”
The Oasis Charitable Trust has been contacted for further comment.
The Justice Committee’s report also welcomes the 70 per cent fall in the number of children in the secure estate over the last decade and praised youth justice workers for supporting “the more challenging cohort” of detainees, who have committed serious crimes.
In addition, MPs raised “significant worries” around the use of separation, where a child is confined against their will.
One former child offender who gave evidence to the committee, said: “You would not put a puppy in a cage for a continuous period and not expect it to have pent-up rage or be aggressive or not want to interact with humans”.
Further concerns raised include the number of children with mental health needs who are detained due to a lack of specialist mental health beds in hospitals.
MPs called on the government to ensure that young offenders with “substantial mental health problems should be in the right place to receive the treatment they need”.
The Ministry of Justice spokeswoman noted that self-harm and assaults have fallen, by 17 per cent and 39 per cent respectively” over the last year in YOIs “and we are investing around £5m to give youth custody officers degree-level training so that they can support these vulnerable children even better”, she said.
