An “incredibly vulnerable” lady held in a younger offenders’ establishment was pinned down and forcibly stripped by “multiple” male jail guards, in response to a watchdog.
The teenager had been restrained and had her garments eliminated on two events at YOI Wetherby in West Yorkshire, which holds a few of the most “challenging” youngsters within the nation.
The Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor mentioned he was “deeply shocked” by the findings, which had been gathered from inspections over November and December final yr.
Officers typically should intervene “multiple times at night” to cease women attempting to hurt themselves, inspectors mentioned, with the positioning having the “highest rate of self-harm of any prison in the country”.
The three women held there account for greater than half of the self-harm incidents up to now yr, which had been the “key cause of use of force and assaults on staff”, Tuesday’s report added.
“We were deeply shocked to find adult male officers restraining and stripping an incredibly vulnerable girl not once but twice,” Mr Taylor mentioned.
“While they no doubt acted to prevent serious harm, the presence of multiple men pinning her down and removing her clothes will have caused further trauma.”
According to justice officers, the officers had been responding to a life-threatening state of affairs and acted to stop the lady from harming herself, with feminine employees not there as that they had been assaulted earlier.
But the report added the establishment had “no excuse” to not have feminine officers current, given how “predictable the behaviour of this particular girl was”.
“This is simply not acceptable,” it added.
Over the previous 12 months, 24 youngsters had been strip-searched, with 12 of these going down whereas they had been being restrained on the jail, which holds 165 youngsters.
Although jail bosses had recorded the choice to hold out a strip-search, “none had recorded the authority to use restraint”.
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Techniques that intentionally trigger ache in a bid to restrain a toddler had been used 9 instances over the identical interval and had been deemed “inappropriate” on every event by an unbiased evaluate panel.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) mentioned restraint is used on youngsters in “rare circumstances” when there’s “no alternative to prevent serious harm to the child, other children or staff”.
“Custody should always be the last resort for children who commit crime and there has been an almost 70% decrease in the number of girls in youth custody since 2015, averaging just 12 girls in custody last year,” she added.
“This small number of girls have exceptionally complex needs and require specialised support, which is why YOI Wetherby is providing additional training to staff on self-harm and increasing opportunities for meaningful activity, education and personal development.”
Source: information.sky.com”