Work has begun on the nation’s first safe college for younger offenders – described as a “revolution” in youth justice.
The new college referred to as Oasis Restore is being constructed within the shell of Medway Secure Training Unit in Kent, a custodial centre that shut down two years in the past.
Rev Steve Chalke, the founding father of the Oasis Trust, which is able to run the varsity, says “it needs to be the blueprint for every youth custodial estate”.
“Oasis Restore is a revolution in youth justice, because it’s based on our understanding of how young people’s brains develop,” he stated.
“So the query we’re asking of them is not, what’s improper with you? It’s what’s occurred to you and we’re coping with the ache and the wrestle that they’ve had via life.
“You can’t take those who’ve been psychologically wounded through trauma, through violence, through neglect, through abuse and somehow hope that by punishing them and locking them up for long enough, they’ll emerge, renewed people. It doesn’t work.”
Medway Secure Training Unit was the centre of scandal amid allegations of abuse and mistreatment.
The idea of safe faculties was put ahead as a part of a evaluate of youth justice providers in 2016.
The plan was to supply enhanced schooling and rehabilitation for youngsters in a what was described as “a therapeutic environment” – a really completely different method to the safe unit on the location earlier than.
An inspection earlier than the closure revealed a major enhance in the usage of power together with pain-inflicting methods. And as soon as once more the centre was rated insufficient.
Read extra: MPs name for ministers to open UK’s first ‘safe college’ in 2022
Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab visited the location this week to see for himself what’s deliberate.
He stated: “The key thing is that it’s a school within prison walls rather than just a tacked-on education unit or team within a prison environment.
“That’s essential as a result of lots of these younger individuals, they’re going to have achieved some very unhealthy crimes, they’re being punished, however additionally they want a chance to rediscover and relearn a few of the issues that they by no means obtained an opportunity to do within the first place due to truancy, as a result of they have been in care, as a result of they have been expelled.”
He added that providing educational or vocational skills would be “vital to bringing down reoffending charges and holding our communities and our streets safer”.
The secure school is expected to open some time between the end of 2023 and the start of 2024 – at least three years behind schedule.
It’ll house 49 young people – mostly aged between 16 and 19 but some may be in their mid-teens.
And at an estimated cost of around £36m, it’s more than seven times over budget.
But Cara Beckett, the director or learning and enrichment at the centre, has high hopes for its success.
“It’s going to be their residence. We’re not right here to punish them once more,” she said.
“The punishment is the truth that they’re being faraway from their associates, their communities, their household.
“What we’re here to provide them with is love, care, family environment and access to really, really strong education.”
She added that the employees will work as quickly as youngsters arrive to “provide them with the tools to succeed when they go back to their communities”.
They will reside in areas nearly like flats with their very own en-suite rooms, breakout areas and shared kitchen and laundry.
But there are those that say younger individuals should not be locked up in any respect.
Helen Woods, who’s chair of the Criminal Justice Group on the British Association of Social Workers, does not imagine it to be a superb use of funds.
“Because there’s only one in the country, which wasn’t the original model for secure schools, it means that the young people placed there are more likely to be placed far from home and a number of them will be on quite short sentences of three to six months,” she stated.
“So that begs the question of how effective any educational therapeutic input can be for these young people and I suppose, more widely, our concern at BASW is that young people would be better dealt with in their communities, better dealt with on community programmes rather than secured in custody.”
Source: information.sky.com”