Prisons: Secure Colleges

Lord Elton Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

The difficulties that exist with youth custody are well known, such as reoffending. Of course, as the House will be aware, the good news is that the number of those in youth custody has reduced from 3,000 to 1,000. This means that those in various forms of youth custody present real problems and real challenges. The secure college pathfinder was a solution favoured by the last Government. We have not ruled out using a secure college. It has not yet received approval at Treasury level, but all of the ideas which it incorporated have not been abandoned. They contain many sound approaches to providing the right answer to this difficult problem.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, when my noble friend makes his recommendations to his Secretary of State, will he emphasise the importance of treating young prisoners as human beings and not as statistics? By that I mean that after they come out of education they have to go back into education seamlessly, which means very close correlation between the local education authority and the prison. Therefore, if you have only one gigantic one you hugely increase the distances to be dealt with, which in itself is a handicap in delivering a good programme.

[Lord Faulks]

My noble friend makes an important point about the continuity in respect of educational gains which can be attained by secure colleges. He will of course be aware that one of the difficulties with this particular cohort is that they very rarely had any continuity in their education before they went into a youth custody institution. One hopes that not only the habits they will acquire in youth custody but the appetite to learn can be consolidated by the sorts of links he describes.