Gove vows to transform culture of secure training centres

Speaking in parliament in response to a report published today by an independent improvement board that was appointed to investigate the governance and safeguarding measures at Medway STC, Gove said all recommendations made by the board have been accepted.

He said the Ministry of Justice would work to strengthen external scrutiny, safeguarding and monitoring arrangements, and clarify the responsibilities of organisations and individuals involved in providing services.

He added that steps will be taken to ensure that whistleblowers, including young people who speak out, are supported and listened to.

Gove said the most fundamental problem identified in the report was that those running Medway “conceived of it as a place of coercion, where the culture and the incentives – as they were designed in the contracts – were centred around the corralling and control of children, rather than their full rehabilitation”.

“Their focus should instead have been on education and care, on identifying root problems and giving children the opportunity to find their way back into society and to make something of themselves,” he said.

He added that the interim report of Charlie Taylor’s ongoing review of youth justice, which was published in February, has said that the system should be made up of "secure schools" rather than "junior prisons".

"I am announcing today that each of the secure training centres will have a new governing body that will scrutinise and support those running each centre," Gove said.

"This will be a first step towards giving these centres the type of oversight and support that we would see in an ordinary school. When Charlie’s final report is published, I hope we will be able to move swiftly to a model that ensures the educational mission of these establishments is central to their existence."

Gove said that the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) will take over the running of Medway by the end of July and will work closely with the Youth Justice Board on enhanced monitoring arrangements that will be put in place.

The MoJ will also appoint a youth custody improvement board to work across the youth secure estate, to help to make sure that children are safe and to improve standards of behaviour management in STCs and young offender institutions.

Police were first alerted to claims of “unnecessary use of force and the use of improper language” in January as a result of a BBC Panorama investigation into the STC.

Five men are currently on police bail after four of them were arrested on suspicion of child neglect, and a fifth was held on suspicion of assault.

Carolyne Willow, director of children's rights charity Article 39 said the independent improvement board's report cofnirmed that Medway STC is "unsafe and damaging".

She said other institutions with the same penal culture are "similarly injurious to children".

"The government's interim response, to appoint a prison governor to run the centre, falls well short of the wisdom, knowledge and child-centredness shown by the improvement board," she added.

"Medway must be closed; a serious case review established so that agencies can work out why they failed children; and coercive and controlling institutions rejected by all political parties from this point forward."

Louise King, director of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, said the report highlights "troubling patterns where an unaccountable system treated some of our most vulnerable and damaged children as in need of punishment rather than care and support".
 
"Youth justice is at a crossroads," she said.

"The way we treat children in custody must change to ensure that the appalling practices at institutions like Medway can never happen again. Charlie Taylor’s review offers a critical opportunity for the government to change direction and put the best interests of children at the heart of a youth justice system that supports them to rebuild their lives.”