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John Ramwell
THE DEMISE OF THE BORSTAL SYSTEM. WHY? (By John Ramwell.)
Coincidentally I had started work on this piece before I received the manuscript of Jeremy Lodge's book on Lowdham Grange. Needless to say I found it really interesting, particularly as it reinforced my own thoughts on the rationale for the ending of the system in the early ‘80s which was achieved by the Criminal Justice Act 1982 that abolished the Borstal system in the UK, replacing Borstals with youth custody centres.
First a little history as gleaned with grateful thanks from Wikipedia: The Gladstone Committee (1895) first proposed the concept of the borstal, wishing to separate youths from older convicts in adult prisons. It was the task of Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise (1857–1935), a prison commissioner, to introduce the system, and the first such institution was established at Borstal Prison in a village called Borstal, near Rochester, Kent, England in 1902. The system was developed on a national basis and formalized in the Prevention of Crime Act 1908.The regimen in these institutions was designed to be "educational rather than punitive", but it was highly regulated, with a focus on routine, discipline and authority during the early years. Borstal institutions were originally designed to offer education, regular work and discipline, though one commentator has claimed that "more often than not they were breeding grounds for bullies and psychopaths. "Initially there was much back slapping and self congratulations as resources and commitments were provided in abundance to make it all work.
Rupert Cross recorded his full honour to Paterson and his admirable appointees for their achievement with Borstals. ‘Borstal was a success in the late 1930s. Well-authenticated figures show a success rate of around 60 per cent, after a three-year follow-up. At Lowdham Grange, the first open borstal, which was, in a sense, the apple of Patterson's eye, it was as high as 77 per cent.
So what has happened? Today I try and discover the rates of re-offending from the ONS. Here’s what I get...Juvenile offenders had a proven re-offending rate of 39.2%The juvenile re-offending rate decreased by 0.7 percentage points since the same quarter in the previous year. Over the years, the rate has fluctuated between 36.3% and 43.6%. However, for context, the number of offenders in the cohort has fallen by 87% since April to June 2006 creating a more volatile series. Given the recidivism rate of those discharged from the Borstals in the years leading up to 1982 it was hardly surprising. It was said that over 80%re-offended with three years of release. If Borstals were made to work; in other words prevented re-offending by more then 50 or 60% within three years, then it might have been considered money well spent. But it never happened.
Make of this information from the ONS what you will. Basically, many years ago, we in the Borstal System guessed it was about to fail if only on the grounds that the costs were high and the returns minimal. The cost of keeping a borstal boy in the late 70s was not a lot less than £100K p.a. whereas the average cost of keeping an offender in a prison was about£33K.I recall that back in the early 1960s whilst a trainee Hospital Officer at HMP Wormwood Scrubs how it dawned on me that the inmates, old and young, were almost all from what we colloquially called the ’working class.’ Should there have been a young prisoner who spoke with an educated accent, who walked head erect and kept himself smart - well a smart as possible given the garb he was presented with - then he would have stuck out like a sore thumb and been hounded to death by his fellow inmates. For the first time I began to realise just how fortunate I had been to have been born into a middle class family with middle class traditions, values and attitudes. ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ was a mantra that resonated. A crime writer whose work I enjoy, Val McDermid, strikes me as having quite the insight to the psychology of the criminal mind. In her book, ‘Out of Bounds’ her heroine, DCI Karen Pirie, has just interviewed a suspect, one she paints in very dark colours. “As they waited for the lift, Jason (her Sergeant) heaved a sigh. ‘What’s the matter?’ Karen asked. ‘See guys like that. They give me the creeps. His life’s burst. How do you end up like that?’ ‘Bad chances, worse choices.’ Jason sighed again.‘
I just think sometimes, they were kids once. They ran about the park kicking a football. They had things they wanted to be. Nobody dreams about being the guy there. Nobody sets out to be like him. And we keep coming up against folk that have got themselves completely fucked up”. The way I look at it, we’re the lucky ones.” Surely this could not be right. Of course we all realise that it is only a relatively small proportion of the total number of those from the under- class within our society at large who end up in custody; but is clear from even a quick observance of the prison population that nearly 100% come from this class of our society. The simple and obvious deduction from this observation is that there is a large part of our population who are destined to come to prison the moment they are born. Their circumstances have so many common denominators such as poor parenting, poverty and poor social conditions that was bound to make them victims. To win the lottery, to really win it big time, one needs to be born into the right place at the right time, to the right parents and to have the right sort of personality (however you decide to define this!).Now I am no left wing socialist, more of a realist, even a pragmatist, as I set to and attempted make my career within the Prison Service as productive as I could both for myself and for those I was paid to care for. Out of 36 years spent in the Prison Service as a Hospital Officer and latterly as a Deputy Governor at HMYOI Hindley near Wigan I spent over eleven employed within the Borstal System, three at Rochester Secure Borstal, Kent and then eight at Gaynes Hall Open Borstal in Cambridgeshire and finally six at Hindley before retiring. Within these three establishments we looked after young men who were less than 23years of age. From the beginning I found the job to be satisfying in that it allowed me to believe I made a difference, albeit in only small increments.
Some years ago I used to give talks to local school students on behalf of the British Exploring Society. I’d start by explaining that, in my view, one needed four ingredients to make a successful life.
Viz.…
1. Knowledge. This makes the best use of your education. This opportunity only comes for around for most of us once in a life time.
2. Opportunities. Seize them when you can and watch out for them coming your way. The trick, of course, is to identify the ones to go for.
3 Motivation. This is tied in with your personality and your own insight. It remains so important to wake up to the
‘opportunity clock’ rather than ‘it’s another day clock.’
And fourthly? What’s your answer? You tell me.
There is another ingredient which, without it, makes all the other three redundant. Rarely did I get the answer and at the end of my talk I’d return to this question. Often I’d get the answer from one or more of the students as they had considered my question during my discourse. Of course it is LUCK, Lady Luck. Though many of us can cultivate luck, we all also know just how feckless it can be. Wikipedia goes on to say...As society had changed the system was then already outdated especially since the late 1960s and early 1970s, with many borstals being closed and replaced with institutions called Detention Centres and, from 1972, also with Community Service Order sentences Not so, Detention Centres were never, as far as I am aware, designed to replace Borstals but were to supplement them as an alternative form of ‘treatment’ known as the ‘short sharp shock’.
I worked in several on detached duty during my early years in the Service and found them tough but humane. In fact the lads soon got to appreciate the tough physical regime and made the most of the three months (exceptionally six months)spent in their confines. The good food, the fresh air and ‘vigorous’ routine gave the vast majority a measure of fitness not previously ever experienced. The trouble was, and I’ll return to this problem again, they returned inevitably to their homes and culture that had led them to break the law in the first place. With no where else to go but back to their families and friends and support as proffered by their home territory, the outcome was almost definitely predetermined.
When I first left the Prison Service to start my retirement some 25 years ago I volunteered some time and effort to a charity that assisted ex young offenders settle back into the community. Often the conditions of early release were that these young men had to live away from their home community in order to prevent them returning to their ‘wicked ways.’ All the assistance in the world was not going to provide for these guys when all they wanted was the familiarity of their own home and friends. Making them remain in a strange town, often only a bus ride away from their own home town, was tantamount to saying to them ‘take that bus ride at your peril.’ They would have been much better off completing their sentence in prison. One of the major issue was one of loneliness. From being constantly surrounded by other inmates and staff they were discharged whilst fired up with great expectations only to be expected to take on the world of relationships, work, finance, mental health, etc. from such a low baseline without having the necessary support. It is no surprise to me that the failure rate within three years of release is so low.
The Criminal Justice Act 1982 officially abolished the borstal system in the UK, introducing youth custody centres instead. As society had changed the system was then already outdated especially since the late 1960s and early1970s, with many borstals being closed and replaced with institutions called Detention Centres and, from 1972, also with Community Service Order sentences. So the first borstal opened over 100 years ago, establishing a method of dealing with troubled boys that had lasted long enough for me to have an amazing opportunity to make a small but significant difference to their lives. Some evidence for this lies in the fact that I have remained in contact with four of those I met in the Borstal system, supporting them as they raised their own families to the present day when three of the four have grand kids. Whilst on the Internet, where I’m reliably informed lies ‘the sum of human knowledge’ I recently came across Ron Lovelock. Here, Ron recalls how he came to spend two years in borstal in the 1960s.
“I left home at the age of 15 as I needed to work to help my three younger brothers. Dad worked away a lot and we never got on with our stepmother. So I went to London. I couldn't read or write, so I conned my way into an office job. But trying to live on £4 a week was just impossible - so I started stealing from the place. They got me to buy National Insurance stamps, which was stupid because I kept the money. Eventually I got caught and was sent to borstal - Redditch in Worcester. It was probably the best thing that happened to me in my life. Everyone in there was the same as me - bad kids, but not terrible kids. In the end they either went the wrong way because of the place, or like me they went the right way. Borstal was hard but one of the screws took an interest in me and taught me to read and write. The other boys took the mick out of me about it, but I stood up for myself and carried on doing what I wanted to do. It was no bed of roses, don't get me wrong. The first day I went in there, they stole my dinner and I had to fight back. I think I fought all the way through borstal. A game that we HAD to play was called 'murder ball' - same as rugby but no rules. To get the ball - and you had to get it - you were allowed to punch and kick your opponents. Black eyes and split lips were the norm. Every day was virtually the same. At 6am we had to get up and run two miles, and if we were two minutes over the time they set, we got no breakfast. Meals were pretty basic. Breakfast was usually porridge, bread and jam. We never got bacon and eggs, nothing like that; they just fed us to fill us up. We cleaned the dorms, then they split us up and gave us jobs to do. Mine was bricklaying. We'd stand out in the rain for hours sometimes, laying bricks. Some days we had lessons or gym classes. We never got visitors. In the evening, those who had enough points for good behaviour were allowed downstairs. We'd play table tennis, darts or cards, or talk to each other. There were stacks of books, but those weren't much good until I learned to read. We slept in small dormitories, with six to eight boys in each room. We used to get up to all sorts together, climbing out at night and hiding in the grounds. There was a lake with an old tank at the bottom, and loads of bullets and shells. We used to dive in to get the bullets out. We'd polish them up, drill a hole to knock out the stuff - we didn't realise the danger - and hang them around our necks. I got beaten up a few times by the screws for having those bullets. When I left borstal, the freedom sent me a bit potty. Having been regimented in every way - a time to eat, a time to sleep - I got rid of every clock in the house. Two years later I slipped up again, and did a short stint in prison. I knocked around with some pretty dangerous people, realised that I had a chance of being that and chose not to be. And that was it - I got my life straightened out. Today my borstal is a young offenders' prison. I went back several years ago -nothing had changed, except in my day it was much more of a boot camp. It seems stupid to have gotten rid of borstals - I think the country misses that sort of place. Kids can't be mollycoddled by the do-gooders of today; it doesn't do them any good. They have to learn discipline. And if they don't learn to fend for themselves, they've had it.”
(This extract was previously published on the BBC News Website in October 2002)Ron turned his life around; others usually gave up hope. The most important sentence in Ron’s’ account is...‘Borstal was hard but one of the screws took an interest in me and taught me to read and write.’ This extract from Ron’s’ account is crucial to any understanding of the word, ‘rehabilitation.’ Unless today’s young offenders are provided with the wherewithal to turn their young lives around then institutions built to house them will remain ‘universities of crime’ perpetuating the behaviour that brought them into conflict with society in the first place. And just where do we find the resources, the funding necessary, to allow staff to take an interest and for rehabilitation to become the key to success? Whilst our country and the rest of the world struggle with the Coronavirus and the economic collapse that will inevitably follow in its’ wake, then rehabilitation programmes will inevitably suffer. It will never be a priority and all efforts will be centred on simple containment. This I understand. Even though most can appreciate the rationale for spending to invest in the future, to accomplish this, funding must be available in the first place. So if we are forced to agree that funding is the key to changing lives around; funding that may provide the luck so many of us take for granted, then it’s a lost cause. End of this road. But there are usually other ways of ‘killing a cat other than drown it in cream’ (as my Gran used to say!) and those who make the new wave of decisions must not give up at this, albeit important yet not vital, hurdle. First we must try and understand the circumstances that most of these vulnerable youngsters come from, Where membership of the right gang can mean survival or death by knife wounds. Where it is ‘dog eat dog’ and the only survival tool is strength and violence. This environment is then crucially made so much worse by the presence of drugs; drugs that offer some short respite from the reality of life succumbing to poverty, drugs that lead to death or serious injury which ruins families and destroys whole communities. Okay, I know it all states the obvious but if we are, as a wider society, going to make any difference we must be that ‘screw’ who took an interest in Ron. Answers not only lie in adequate resources but how we spend these resources. No one is underestimating the part education must play but on its’ own this is never going to be sufficient.
Now we return to the three ingredients to aid success that I have previously mentioned: motivation, opportunities and, most of all, that elusive Lady Luck.
