Plans For An £85m "secure College" For Young Offenders Sounds Like Creeping Child Abuse

Having scarcely made a headline, the Justice Secretary - Chris Grayling`s plans for an £85 million "secure college" for young criminal offenders sounds expensive but not exactly unreasonable on its surface. Repeated headlines about young criminality and anti-social behaviour, exemplified by the 2011 London Riots, has created a climate in which draconian punishment may seem more popular. However the details of this less than aptly named "college" paint an image of something not so far from the kind of political issues in far flung countries being described in the pages of reports from Human Rights Watch. This prison however is being built in Leicestershire.

Namely the use of force against offenders aged 12 to 17 to "maintain good order and discipline", evoking images in my mind of a Victorian workhouse rather than a modern justice system in a liberal democracy. The use of force against young offenders is already permitted given they present a danger to themselves or others including staff, yet the new regulations that the Ministry of Justice is attempting to impose appear to go far beyond this. Although Andrew Selous (Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Justice) has assured the public that "the new environment will be safe and secure", the move has seemingly been condemned wherever it has been talked about. In an article by Frances Crook of the Howard League for Penal Reform (published by the Guardian), by Alex Hudson (published in the Daily Mirror). While the Daily Telegraph reports that a coalition of 29 children`s groups led by Children Rights Alliance for England have condemned the Ministry of Justice for planning to build "expensive and dangerous child jails". Crook points out that children in young offenders "have almost always come from backgrounds of violence, abuse and neglect". Suggesting that reducing regulations against the use of force on young prisoners will have a detrimental impact and will impair attempts to rehabilitate offenders. The Ministry of Justice has claimed the college will focus on education, an approach frequently linked to rehabilitation and with the most evidence of success. However Crook has called this claim into doubt arguing "it is symptomatic of the kind of institution that ministers are proposing - not a college with education at its heart, but a giant prison where human rights are infringed and physical violence becomes part of the rules." Despite criticism there have been as of yet no attempts by the Ministry of Justice to amend these plans.

In a political climate of waning liberalism, the move is perhaps less likely to garner controversy. Nor has the move received widespread coverage from the TV or newspaper press which has evidently been too busy documenting Kim Kardashian`s butt and trying to work out whether Bulgarians are any better or worse than Romanians. The ministry`s approach stinks of a justice system based on retribution rather than rehabilitation. The first of which is a philosophy of criminal justice well repudiated in Ted Honderich`s 1969 book "Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited". As Honderich points out retribution is effectively revenge masquerading as justice. Finally in a world where the nations ranked as leaders on criminal justice follow a rehabilitative process, why does it make sense to move in the opposite direction - promoting child abuse whilst preaching the virtues of education. The WJP Index on the Rule of Law ranks Denmark first in terms of the rule of law, followed by Norway second, Sweden as third, and Finland at four. The common denominator on all four countries is a strong focus on rehabilitation.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/14/young-offenders-education-detention-academies

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/super-prisons-children-secret-courts-telling-4617370

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11154997/Childrens-groups-speak-out-against-new-borstal.html