Children held in solitary confinement

Chief prison inspector demands urgent action after finding boys kept in solitary confinement

HM Chief Inspector of prisons has issued an Urgent Notification to the Secretary of State for Justice, demanding immediate action to improve the conditions in which children are being held at Cookham Wood Young Offenders Institution in Kent.

What is an Urgent Notification?

The Urgent Notification (UN) protocol requires the Justice Secretary to respond in public within 28 days with plans to improve a prison where the Chief Inspector, Charlie Taylor, has significant concerns over the treatment and conditions of prisoners.

The inspection report

An inspection of a HMYOI Cookham Wood in April 2023 published today found that a quarter of the boys were being held in solitary confinement for extended periods, including two for more than 100 days, as a means of managing conflict between children. Records showed that it was not unusual for these boys to not come out of their cells for days on end, with no meaningful human interaction, education or other intervention. At the time of the inspection, 90% of children were subjected to ‘keep aparts’ meaning they were not allowed to mix with some of their peers, and staff were managing 583 individual conflicts in a population of 77 children.

Violence

Children told inspectors they felt unsafe, and were increasingly resorting to carrying weapons, many of which were made from metal which boys had scavenged from equipment in their cells including kettles in a bid to protect themselves. More than 200 weapons had been recovered in the six months preceding the inspection, despite inadequate searching procedures. In the inspectorate’s survey, nearly a quarter of children said they felt unsafe.

While levels of violence against children had decreased slightly since the last inspection, they were still higher than similar prisons. Violence against staff had increased. Some incidents were serious in nature involving multiple assailants and weapons.  The widespread availability of weapons contributed to poor perceptions of safety amongst staff and children. One key sign of the acceptance of this high level of violence was the fact that inspectors found that violent incidents were not being investigated.

With the exception of one unit, inspectors found that behaviour management was ineffective and children lacked boundaries. They said that “more often than not poor behaviour was not challenged”, incentives for good behaviour were not delivered and the instant reward scheme was underutilised. As a consequence, inspectors saw examples of poor behaviour in all areas of the establishment.

Under-staffing

Cookham Wood was in a poor overall condition, with dirty living units and broken equipment. Prison staff were exhausted, with significant shortfalls on wings, and, while many clearly cared about the children, they felt unsupported by senior managers and had given up hope that improvement was possible. Shortages of operational staff, high levels of sickness and a poor retention rate meant that out of 141 operational posts there were about 60 who were able to be deployed.

In the inspectorate’s staff survey 83% of respondents said their morale was low or very low. Many staff commented that they felt unsafe at work and were frustrated by inconsistent leadership and managers that undermined each other.

450 staff were employed at Cookham Wood, including 44 directly employed managers, of whom 24 were senior leaders. The fact that such rich resources were delivering this unacceptable service for just 77 children indicated that much of it was currently wasted, underused or in need of reorganisation to improve outcomes at the site.

The findings of this inspection represented the culmination of a steady decline in standards documented in inspections since 2016 which the Chief Inspector said could not be allowed to continue:

“Many of these children have committed serious crimes and have rightly been detained. Nevertheless, they are still children, many of whom have come from very difficult backgrounds. They ought to be receiving education and support to make better choices in the future, supporting their rehabilitation and growth into adulthood so they leave custody in a better position than they entered it. We spoke to boys who’d had almost no human contact at all in days, and who had resorted to trying to stick up photos of home with toothpaste on the walls of the tiny cells that became their whole world. Such treatment of children is appalling. This is a scandal and it cannot be allowed to continue.”