Archive for the ‘Children and young people’ Category

Ofsted report on child jails and secure units

Ofsted has issued a report today on the resettlement needs of children who are held in privately run child jails and local authority units. This once again illustrates how supine and ill-equipped Ofsted is to protect children in penal custody. 
The inspectors are meant to look at the welfare, protection and well being of children sent [...]

August 12, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Children and young people  2 Comments

Policy developments

I haven’t got around to doing a blog for ages because we have been rushing around organising events. I am not going to comment on the hustings or conference on community sentences because there are detailed reports on the website, but there have been some interesting policy developments that are worthy of comment.
In the [...]

July 29, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy, Headline grabbing, Uncategorized  No Comments

Non porous prisons

Over the last few months, members of my team have been working with children in prisons across the country. This has been part of our exciting U R Boss project – a ground breaking youth justice project that provides a participation programme to children in custody and those recently released into the community. U R [...]

June 23, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Children and young people  No Comments

Budget cuts

The BBC is reporting that tomorrow’s budget will include a promise to force local authorities to freeze the council tax. This may not be all the good news that the journalists are claiming. There are areas of local authority spending that have ramifications for individuals but also for how we all feel about [...]

June 21, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy, Uncategorized  No Comments

Making real savings

So Nick Clegg says he is going to bring in “a new approach to penal reform” which will end “mass criminalisation of young people” and Labour’s “build and fill ‘em approach to prisons”. He told the Guardian at the weekend that: “I’ll be doing this with Ken Clarke in the weeks ahead.” Good [...]

June 7, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy, Uncategorized  2 Comments

A visit to Belfast

I visited Belfast yesterday at the invitation of Niacro to speak to MLAs following the devolution of justice. 
The lively meeting was held in a committee room in Stormont, an imposing building constructed in the 1930s reminiscent of the Italian style of the time.  MLAs from four political parties attended, along with the chief inspector, prison [...]

June 2, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy, Inside prisons  No Comments

Criminalising children

And so two young boys, aged 10 and 11, have been found guilty of the attempted rape of an 8 year old girl. They will now be sentenced, most likely into child custody, and join the sex offenders’ register.
As I said before, criminalising young children does not help young victims and does nothing to enhance [...]

May 25, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy, Headline grabbing, Uncategorized  2 Comments

Protecting young victims

The trial of two young children for an alleged sexual assault on an eight year old girl makes for distressing reading, and I have to be careful as I cannot make any comment on a case whilst it is being tried.  But I do want to raise a more general point about child victims. 
Almost all [...]

May 14, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Children and young people, Victims  No Comments

Locking up children for a profit

So the private company running Rainsbrook children’s jail defended itself in the media following my “stinging” criticism. The company claims that the Ofsted inspection was glowing, and indeed it is right in that. But that indeed is the problem. The Ofsted inspections of child jails are superficial and absolutely fail to get to grips with [...]

May 11, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Children and young people  No Comments

Former employee of secure training centre charged with violence towards teenage boy

A former member of staff at a child jail has been given a 40-week suspended prison sentence after he admitted to dragging a teenage boy across the floor.
Neil Hanna, aged 27, was employed as a team leader at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre, near Daventry, in September 2008 when he was sent outside to bring a [...]

May 5, 2010   Posted in: Children and young people, Inside prisons, Prison officers, Prisons, Sentencing  One Comment