Problems throughout the estate

An Action Plan for Oakhill Secure Training Centre (STC) is due this month from the Justice Ministry to address profound and systemic failures identified there by Ofsted. Three publicly run Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) are “plagued with often very serious violence at levels that were higher than in any adult prisons”.  PAVA incapacitant spray has since been made available in two of them, notwithstanding concerns among young people that it will create further divisions between staff and young people.  

As for the Secure School, it’s astonishing that a £40 million refit could not produce suitable infrastructure to meet the challenges posed by highly demanding young people.

Maybe the problem lies in Oasis Restore’s  original idea of having fortified wooden doors rather than steel ones. But their 2023-4 Annual Report says that “Furniture, Fittings and Equipment have been purchased through specialist (secure) provider procurement frameworks and extensive research to baseline and assure requirements against educational and justice sector”.

 It also reports that “Rigorous incident testing, development of safeguarding and critical incidence risk framework has been applied across all policy and operational designs. These were reviewed by Trustees before being presented for pre -opening approval by the Ministry of Justice”. Clearly something has gone wrong if the doors can’t withstand someone trying to barge their way through it.

There are serious questions for the Ministries of Justice and Education and their contractors; and for Ofsted who approved the building for use before it opened. MP’s on the Public Accounts Committee should look into this debacle as part of their inquiry into the MoJ which has a focus on the maintenance of properties. In this case, it  is quite possible that a confused set of responsibilities has contributed to the problem.

Broader questions

But there are broader questions for Oasis too. There have been reports of a loss of control in the facility although the most recent inspection in June found no serious or widespread failures that result in children’s welfare not being safeguarded or promoted. But the claim by Oasis founder Steve Chalke that the school had been doing really well is an exaggeration. Ofsted judged the school required improvement to be good and the effectiveness of its leaders and managers was inadequate.

So there may be more to this problem than badly designed doors. After all what were the residents doing trying – and succeeding- in breaking them down? The pause affords an opportunity for Oasis Restore to reflect honestly on what’s gone on. That’s after all what they expect their residents to do when things go wrong.

Where now for secure schools?

The failures at Oasis Restore represent a setback for the long term vision of replacing the YOIs and STC with Secure Schools and Secure Childrens Homes.  I hope it’s not a terminal one although some may take a different view.  I have not seen any suggestion that there are funds in the MoJ spending settlement for a second Secure School, although it may form part of the prison expansion programme. If not, will the first one prove to be the last?

Thanks to Tim Mossholder for kind permission to use the header image in this post which was previously published on Unsplash.