Feltham Young Offender Institution

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord’s observations. We have developed a clear process to respond to urgent notification letters. Senior officials, led by the executive director of the Youth Custody Service, will be directly involved in the work to ensure that immediate action is taken, along with a more in-depth plan to ensure that we see sustained improvement to the establishment in the long term. Of course, as part of the process, the department will publicly respond to the chief executive within 28 days.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the Minister. He said that steps were being taken to curtail new entrants to Feltham A. Is he aware that many of the people in Feltham A have family in the community who are seriously concerned about what is happening to those individuals? What method is being used to inform the near-enough families of the people in Feltham about what is going on? Has the Minister any plans to disclose for a proper way of establishing control and discipline, so that a proper programme of rehabilitation, education and training can take place?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, education, training and rehabilitation are all critical elements of youth custody. To succeed, they require motivation. When motivation is lacking, it becomes extremely difficult to implement what is required.

We seek to improve the situation at Feltham A, in particular. The staff to prisoner ratio in Feltham A, and across all the youth capacity, is normally one to 12, based on full occupancy. The decision to reduce the operational capacity at Feltham A has meant that that ratio has been improved to one to eight.

As regards communications, families are able to keep in regular contact with inmates in the youth custody regime, and I do not understand that there have been any particular difficulties reported on that front at present.