Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
LONDON, April 14 (AFP) - The British government defended Tuesday
plans to open a special detention centre for child criminals that
critics claim will become a "college for crime" and cost more than
staying at the Ritz hotel.
The first such privately run centre for children aged 12 to 14
is to open on Friday in the southern town of Medway and will hold 40
of the country's worst repeat juvenile offenders, who have committed
long lists of crimes but are too young for an adult prison.
The aim of the facility is to rehabilitate tearaways who have
been convicted of three or more imprisonable offences, such as
stealing cars.
Serious child criminals, such as murderers, can be put into
local young offenders' homes, but the courts are reluctant to clog
up these facilities with the less serious young criminals, who are
usually kept at home under supervision of social workers.
The children will be supervised by 26 staff, who will mostly
have backgrounds in the social services rather than prison
institutions, including nurses, teachers, social workers and gym
instructors.
To encourage the children to take responsibility for themselves,
they will be made to do their own washing and cooking, and will also
do at least 25 hours of school work a week.
The setting up of the first of five planned centres was
contracted out under the previous Conservative government and
lambasted at the time by the then opposition Labour Party as
creation of "colleges of crime."
Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair's government is keen to crack
down on youth crime and now finds itself defending the idea, while
stressing that the centres will not be jails, but places where
children can be put on track.
Critics are homing in on the alleged cost of the first centre
and fears that putting young criminals together for long periods
will only lead to them developing worse habits.
According to the Children's Society the cost will be 5,000
pounds (8,350 dollars) per child per week, ten times the cost of top
private schools Eton and Harrow, and twice the price of staying at a
luxury hotel.
"College of Crime. Outrage as 5,000 pound a week children's
prison is unveiled," complained The Mirror tabloid daily on
Tuesday.
Alun Michael, minister of state for home affairs, dismissed
these figures as "taken out of the air," but said that the cost
could not be disclosed because negotiations are still ongoing for
the four other proposed centres.
Children's Society chief executive Ian Sparks said kid criminals
should be kept nearer their homes, not sent away. "We are in danger
of creating dumping grounds for the children society doesn't know
what to do with," he said.
The principal officer for the National Association for the Care
and Resettlement of Offenders, Paul Cavadino, said the five centres
would cost more than 30 million pounds a year and that the money
should instead have been spent on "developing intensive supervision
programmes in the community."
Nick Metcalfe, a spokesman for the private security firm Group
4, which is setting up the centre, said "there is clearly some
punishment of depriving someone of their liberty. They will be away
from home maybe for a year."
"There will be a regime that will not involve sitting around
watching too much television ... it's going to be fairly brisk," he
said.
The problem of very young criminals has become a hot political
issue thanks to well publicised cases of boys barely in their teens
notching up breath-taking crime records almost with impunity.
Tommy Laws, now 17, became nationally known as "Spider Boy" when
he was just 13 for his method of using roof tops to escape the scene
of crimes, including the theft of 190 cars.
--
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