Girl Restrained and Stripped TWICE by Male Prison Staff

[Ladybbird]

Wetherby: Teen Girl Restrained and Stripped TWICE by Male Prison Staff, Inspectors Say

Wetherby Young Offender Institution holds some of the most complex and vulnerable young prisoners

BBC 5 MAR 2024




A vulnerable girl in a young offenders institution twice had her clothes removed under restraint by an all-male team of prison officers, a report says.

The inmate had been stripped to stop her using her clothes to harm herself at Wetherby Young Offender Institution.



The incident emerged in a report highly critical of the facility, which houses some of the UK's most complex children.

Its author Charlie Taylor said care for vulnerable young people - especially girls - was "not good enough".

The chief inspector of prisons told the BBC it costs nearly £250,000 a year to keep a child at Wetherby, adding: "With outcomes like this, there has to be a real question over whether this is working."

Inmates at Wetherby are between 15 and 18 and almost half have been in the care system during their lives. Some are beginning very long or life sentences.

There are seven girls imprisoned in England and Wales. When Wetherby was inspected in late 2023, three were held there - a small fraction of the institution's 165 inmates.

Wetherby saw almost 900 incidents of self-harm in the space of a year - the highest of any prison in England and Wales - and more than half were accounted for by the three girls.

The report found the "extremely high" levels of self-harm had led to "very high" levels of use of force and assaults on staff.

Some child inmates had very little time out of their cell, particularly at weekends, the report said

It singled out the treatment of one particular girl who was using her clothes to make ligatures and was twice pinned down and forcibly stripped by male prison staff.

Female staff did not attend the searches because they had been assaulted earlier in their shift.

Mr Taylor said the girl's "predictable" pattern of self-harm meant there was no excuse not to have female staff on hand, adding: "The fact it happened twice is completely unacceptable."

He painted a damning picture of how girls are managed by the prison system, particularly at Wetherby, after warning in his report there is no "coherent plan" about how they should be held.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Girls only ended up housed at Wetherby because of the closure of failing institutions elsewhere.

"Most end up in secure children's homes but the most needy, who these homes can't accommodate, end up in the most unsuitable conditions - at Wetherby."




Cells Doors in HMYOI Wetherby