Legal Commentary ‘A Sorry Tale’: Forcible Physical Restraint of Children in Custody
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225412461216 |
| Date | 01 December 2012 |
| Author | Nigel Stone |
| Published date | 01 December 2012 |
Youth Justice
12(3) 245 –257
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225412461216
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Legal Commentary
‘A Sorry Tale’: Forcible Physical
Restraint of Children in Custody
Nigel Stone
Any youth justice system with provision for the detention of children has to determine
whether, in what circumstances and by what methods it is lawful and appropriate for those
staffing detention facilities to use physical force upon the young persons for whom they
are responsible. This dilemma has recently been starkly posed and subjected to careful
judicial scrutiny in a sequence of judgments centred on the work of one type of detention
facility in England and Wales − Secure Training Centres (STCs). STCs were introduced
by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) 1994 which extended the ambit of
the Prison Act 1952 to include this additional form of custodial institution, run by private
sector contractors,1 to house children sentenced to a new form of disposal, the secure
training order (STO), targeting 12 to 14 year-olds who were considered to evidence per-
sistent patterns of offending coupled with resistance to community-based intervention.
The STO proved a short-lived and problematic sentencing initiative, much critical
attention being drawn to the standard of care and control in the first STC, the Medway
Centre, judged by the Social Services Inspectorate (SSI, 1999) to be in crisis, evidencing
major failings and proving significantly wanting in its service delivery (see also Hagell
et al., 2000). As Ball et al. (2001) put it:
Good order was a very fragile feature and had frequently broken down so that staff over-
relied on restraint and single separation as the means of control. This caused trainees to feel
aggrieved and powerless, and confirmed them in a victim role which in turn enabled them to
justify their own aggressive and destructive behaviour and strengthened their criminogenic
attitudes.
Though the STO’s target offender group was absorbed within the detention and
training order (DTO) introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and is now
Corresponding author:
Nigel Stone, School of Social Work and Psychology, Elizabeth Fry Building, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ,
UK.
Email: n.stone@uea.ac.uk
461216YJJ12310.1177/1473225412461216Youth JusticeStone
2012
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