Youth custody: The inside story

The 17-year-old, who is serving a four-year sentence for a serious offence, is crouched beneath some family pictures, in front of her mirror, wrestling with a hair band. "I've got carpet, soft pillows and a proper duvet," she points out proudly.

When Lisa (not her real name) transferred from Holloway Young Offender Institution (YOI) seven months ago, she became one of the first inmates at the new Josephine Butler Unit at HMP Downview in Sutton, Surrey.

The unit was officially launched at the end of July, away from the press glare but in front of the great and good of youth justice, including Youth Justice Board chair Rod Morgan and Martin Narey, chief executive of the National Offender Management Service, who is due to move to Barnardo's next month. At the launch, Lisa read out one of her poems, recounting her lonely childhood with an abusive father.

The new unit is the first of four to be opened by the Prison Service and Youth Justice Board as part of a 16m plan to revolutionise custodial care of young women. By December, almost all 17-year-old girls who are sent into custody (and those who have turned 18 but are close to the end of their sentences) will be locked away in one of the units. And young women under 17 will be sent to either secure training centres or local authority secure children's homes.

Plans change

Initially, there were plans for five units, but now the Youth Justice Board has decided to make more girls' places available in secure training centres while creating accommodation especially for young mums with babies.

With just 16 beds, the Butler unit resembles rooms in local authority secure children's homes and secure training centres more than the traditional cell blocks found in most YOIs.

Lucy Bogue, juvenile and young offender manager at the Prison Service, says: "In the current accommodation, girls have to share with those over the age of 18 and they sometimes had a feeling of being unsafe.

"They were living in large wings in institutions with up to 48 cells," she adds. "These units are smaller and we can offer much more intensive support that can look at their individual needs and assist them back to rehabilitation. We have never cared for young people this way before."

At the end of June 2005, there were 2,238 boys aged 15 to 17 in prison, compared with just 72 girls. Of the 54 girls actually convicted, the majority had been sentenced for robbery or violence, according to the National Offender Management Service.

The new approach to caring for young women came following a damning accommodation report at Holloway in 2002 that caused Anne Owers, HM chief inspector of prisons, to demand urgent action from the Youth Justice Board.

Paul Bowers, director of service delivery at the board, says: "We decided we had to get girls out of prison and started to look at what we could do as an alternative. This unit is purpose-built to help the girls address the problems that brought them there."

David Charity, deputy governor at HMP Downview, has worked extensively across the juvenile estate and was part of the development team. He says many of the girls arrive as "damaged" goods. "Most of these girls will never have achieved anything before," he says. "When they come here, they have some structure. They're part of a family."

A special campaign to recruit staff for the unit was also meticulously carried out. "We want to make sure that all our officers are here for the right reasons," adds Charity.

With en suite toilet and shower, the rooms in the Butler unit are specially designed to cut the risk of suicide and self-harm. The curtain rail, for instance, is held up by magnets to stop it bearing weight and the shower head is designed to prevent anything hanging from it.

More personal attention

Richard Foster, head of the unit, believes that if the girls have a more personal and comfortable environment it will encourage positive behaviour.

The packed regime, with less time in the cells and more hours in class, helps.

The differences between the Butler unit and the accommodation and environment in other prison settings are vast. Even the traditional uniform of white shirt and dark blue trousers has changed to lemon polo shirts.

But the real difference lies in the dizzying array of resources and expertise available. The unit's multidisciplinary team, for example, includes youth offending team and Connexions workers, a YMCA-funded youth worker, health care staff, drug and alcohol specialists, mentors, community and mental health service nurses and resettlement staff, and on-call psychiatric doctors. With up to 10 inmates to one member of staff in YOIs, the young women at the Butler unit can call on one senior manager, seven uniformed staff, two social workers, six education staff and two substance misuse workers.

Lisa is starting to see the benefit. "You do have a lot of time to think about what you have done," she says. "It does fuck your head up (being inside) but you have got to deal with it and here you get help from the right people. I feel now that people do care about me and are giving me a second chance in life."

The rewards system is also different in the Butler unit, where girls automatically get a high level of privileges.

"We make the assumption that they want to behave in a sociable way - certainly the emphasis in much of the rest of the prison system is that privileges need to be earned," says Foster.

Like many of the young women in the Butler unit, Lisa failed to complete school. But with more than 30 hours a week put aside for education, she has been studying GCSE modules in IT as well as doing English and maths and arts and gardening projects.

New outlook

Dawn Funnell is the unit's life-skills co-ordinator from the North East Surrey College of Technology.

"One of the biggest challenges we have with the girls is breaking through the negativity to get them thinking positively about education," she says.

"Many of them just think that a criminal record is the end of their lives. I tell them that doesn't have to be the case."

Many young women in the unit also struggle with substance misuse problems.

Christine McCarron is a juvenile substance misuse worker who looks after young women with drug addictions.

"We have had a number of heroin detoxes and some girls have been on speed binges for quite a long time," she says. "We work with them to get them out of bed. Sometimes it is just talking to them, reassuring them and maybe doing some therapeutic work."

McCarron, who has also worked with adult prisoners, says the resources and support available are vast compared with elsewhere in the prison system.

As the girls return to classes, Foster says: "The girls much prefer being in here than the custodial establishments they've been in previously.

"The atmosphere is genuinely upbeat," he adds. "Many of the people we get here have a long history either in local authority care or in different types of secure establishments, so they do have an institutional history. But this is not even remotely similar to the regimes that I have worked in before. Five or six years ago I envisaged a unit like this - I didn't think it would ever happen though."

A DAY IN CUSTODY

Viara (not her real name), 17, has been in the Butler unit for just over a month and is awaiting a court case. "I was scared the first time I came in here," she remembers. "I thought it would be like a proper prison."

After being woken at 7am, Viara's door is opened at 7.45am for breakfast and her first class of the day starts at 8.20am. This morning it was a smoking cessation session followed by an IT lesson and then art.

After a noon lunch (favourites are chicken kebabs), the young women return after an hour for more classes, which Viara says she likes because there are only about four people per teacher. "I left school at 14 but this is much better. The teachers give you a lot more respect."

At the end of education, inmates will have their evening meal and then sit down for "association".

"Maybe we'll play pool or XBox and play some ball games. We get locked in at 8.15pm but you can watch TV in your room until 11, or 12 at weekends," says Viara.

"I'm happy in the environment but obviously I would rather not be here. If you get down, the staff are nice and they do talk to you."