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Secure Training Centre (Amendment) Rules 2007

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I can understand the need for physical restraint when young people are likely to harm themselves or others, or to damage property, or are at risk of absconding. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, amply demonstrated, the number of incidents compared with the number in our secure training centres is deeply worrying: 10 incidents a year for every young person in a security training centre. As we heard in Adam Rickwood’s case, there were 20 incidents for every person at Hassockfield. What strikes me is that these are meant to be secure training centres, and what troubles me is that that very term may be undermined by the extensive use of physical restraint. I am not sure how training and physical restraint go together. While physical restraint may be necessary sometimes, it is quite as likely to breed resentment, bitterness and further violence as much as it is compliance. It certainly does not provide a very adequate vehicle of training, which makes me fear that the purpose of these centres is being undermined, since it is to open up these most vulnerable offenders to education and training. If it is now impossible to maintain good order and discipline in secure training centres without more frequent use of physical restraint, the last thing we need is more permissive regulation, which is what we are faced with, allowing even more extensive use of physical restraint. What we need instead is a fuller inquiry—and I hope it will be the last—into that aspect of our youth justice system. I add my voice to that of the noble Lord in pleading that this may be the very last inquiry but that it is one that considerably amends the so-called amended regulation.