On 16 June Justice Secretary Robert Buckland announced that all the children held at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre (STC), near Rugby, would be removed because of ‘serious ongoing safety concerns’. This followed an inspection of the STC five days earlier which resulted in Rainsbrook being issued a second ‘urgent notification’ by the combined inspectors of Ofsted, the Prisons Inspectorate and the Care Quality Commission. ERIC ALLISON reports.
Rainsbrook was designed to hold up to 87 children aged 12-18 years old, but held just 33 when the decision was made to remove those held there to a safer place. The reduced capacity followed an inspection in October 2020, which found newly admitted children, some as young as 15, were locked in their ‘bedrooms’ for 14 days and allowed out for just 30 minutes each day. The inspectors later said that, despite assurances that immediate action would be taken, a further visit in December found little progress. The situation caused the three inspectorates to use their power to issue Buckland with the first ‘urgent notification’, requiring him to set out how he intended to address the situation within 28 days. Ofsted’s chief inspector said: ‘Rainsbrook was warned that its treatment of newly admitted children was unacceptable, yet these concerns have been ignored. Some of the most vulnerable children are being locked up for days on end, with little thought about their safety or wellbeing. Leaders and government must act now to address this.’
Rainsbrook is one of three STC children’s prisons currently operating in England and Wales. The others are Medway in Kent and Oakhill in Milton Keynes. All are privately run – Rainsbrook currently by the British arm of Management and Training Corporation (MTC), the third biggest correctional facilities operator in the US. A spokesman for MTC said: ‘We recognise there is more work to do to improve the centre and we do accept more should have been done during this challenging period. We understand what changes we need to make to ensure this does not happen again.’
In response to the first notification, Justice Minister Lucy Frazer said: ‘These findings are incredibly concerning and disappointing, particularly as MTC gave repeated assurances that they would act on previous warnings. We have immediately stopped placing young people at Rainsbrook and have appointed additional, experienced management staff to oversee the swift and thorough improvements we are demanding.’
It has taken six months for those ‘additional, experienced management staff’ to decide to remove children from the cruel clutches of this corporate giant. It begs the question of who in this wretched justice system decided they were capable of looking after some of the most damaged and vulnerable children in our society. I am not suggesting that, as has been proven in the US, bribes have been involved in the awarding of hugely profitable prison contracts; but did the decision makers not do their homework on MTC’s record of gross mismanagement and neglect in some of the jails they operate stateside?
Rainsbrook – a history of abuse
Rainsbrook has form for abusing children and much worse. In April 2004, 15-year-old Gareth Myatt refused to clean a sandwich toaster at the jail, which was then run by G4S. He was ordered to his room and complied with the order. A few minutes later, two custody officers entered his cell and took some of his possessions away from him, including a piece of paper on which his mother’s mobile number was written down. He remonstrated with the pair who began to restrain him. He struggled and they sent for another officer and the three commenced to hold him down. After a few minutes, the lad said he couldn’t breathe; they said: ‘If you can talk, you can breathe.’
Gareth then said he was soiling himself. One of his assailants said: ‘You are going to have to shit yourself’ and he was not released. He vomited and still they held him down. He died of ‘asphyxia, due to inhalation of gastric content, during his restraint in a prone position,’ an inquest jury found, while recording a verdict of accidental death. Accidental? One of his attackers, David Beadnall, was six feet tall and weighed 16 stone. Gareth was four foot ten and weighed less than seven stone. G4S later lost the contract to run Rainsbrook, but continued to operate Medway STC until a BBC Panorama undercover operation revealed widescale abuse staff were inflicting on the kids in their charge. Beadnall was promoted to Health and Safety Manager across G4S children’s homes extensive estate.
Monitoring or covering up?
Where was the Youth Justice Board (YJB) in the scandal of Rainsbrook and Medway? They had a monitor in place in both jails, but what were they doing? At Medway, that worthy’s office was at the front of the building, facing out onto a main road, not inside, where the abuse was taking place.
A few months after the death of Gareth Myatt, 14-year-old Adam Rickwood became the youngest person in modern times to die in custody in Britain. He took his own life after being restrained, by staff who administered a nose distraction technique – a karate type harp blow landing below his nose. Like Gareth, Adam had not committed a violent act, tried to escape, nor was he damaging prison property: the only three offences where restraint of children was permitted. Shockingly, after these two fatalities, the YJB conspired with the Ministry of Justice to try and allow restraint for noncompliance to become lawful – an attempt which eventually failed. Not long afterwards, the YJB asked me to speak at their national conference. I asked those attending what they did when their kids refused to clean their room, or a toaster? Did they get three adults to pin their children to the ground? They have never invited me back.
A history of abuse
Secure Training Centres are just the latest version of children’s prisons, with abuse dating back years rife through the system. Perhaps the most graphic example is the horror that ensued at Medomsley Detention Centre, County Durham, where between 1961 and 1988 a group of prison officers brutalised the children in their ‘care’. For over ten years one individual officer, Neville Husband, raped hundreds of boys and young men who worked in the kitchen he ran, while other staff turned a blind eye to his crimes. One member said: ‘Husband used to keep a boy behind in the kitchen at night, we always felt sorry for that boy.’ Sorry! From an officer of the Crown? Sorry, for not using his powers of arrest to stop years of everyday rape? Medomsley Detention Centre closed in 1988, only to reopen in 1999 as Hassockfield STC. Closing again in 2015 it is now due to be redeveloped as a prison for women asylum seekers.
No to privatisation! No to state abuse!
We need to fight to close these punitive institutions – whether privatised or state-run – where children continue to be brutalised. As of May 2021, there are 472 children in prison in England and Wales, some held in STCs, others in Young Offender Institutes which house 15-21 year-olds. More than half (52%) are from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. This is a national scandal and we must raise our voices to shout about it.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 283, August/September 2021
