Youth custody ‘churning out angry adults’, psychologist warns after damning report

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HM Inspectorate of Prisons said standards in secure training centres and young offender institutions remained “woeful”, despite the number of children held in custody falling to its lowest level.

The Children in Custody 2025–26 report found 39% of children surveyed had felt unsafe at some point, while 14% said they felt unsafe at the time of the survey.

Violence was described as a regular feature of life in the estate. There were nearly 500 assaults at Wetherby, more than 400 at Feltham, including 126 involving weapons, and 324 at Werrington, where 44 assaults required hospital treatment.

Dr Naomi Murphy, a consultant clinical and forensic psychologist at Nottingham Trent University and host of the ‘Locked up Living’ podcast, said the report was “a really heartbreaking and dreadful indictment of our society and what a poor job we do of keeping children safe”.

She told LBC: “Some of these young people have been locked up for up to 19 hours a day. All your interactions are with people who you have quite a distant relationship with. It’s not like being raised within a family home.”

“Even a child who’s well-adjusted is going to struggle in that environment. There’ll be a lot of aggression within the environment because children are scared in these places.”

The report found two-thirds of children said they had been physically restrained by staff, while 56% said they had been separated from other children as a punishment.

At Oakhill Secure Training Centre in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, inspectors found children had been separated for several days, despite rules stating that separation should normally last no longer than three hours.

The failings at Oakhill were serious enough for Ofsted, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and the Care Quality Commission to trigger the Urgent Notification Protocol, notifying the Justice Secretary of their findings. The centre director and one deputy director had been suspended, another deputy director had been dismissed, and 30 other staff had been suspended in the months before the inspection.

Dr Murphy said prolonged isolation could have grave consequences.

“People become very hopeless, feel very desperate, so then they can resort to more tragic behaviours like attempting suicide, for instance, significant self-harm,” she said.

“These are children who will be feeling totally forgotten about. No matter how horrendous some of their behaviour may be at times, these are children who have already been wronged by society.”

Only Parc Young Offender Institution in Bridgend was judged safe enough by inspectors. Inspectors rated education inadequate at all three English YOIs, while 16% of children across the estate said they were doing no education, work or offending-behaviour intervention.

The report also underlined the vulnerability of the children in custody: 64% said they had previously been in local authority care, 48% reported health problems, and 38% said they had a disability.

Dr Murphy said the approach risked making children more dangerous when they return to the community.

“If you feel like nobody’s invested in you, you’re really badly treated, it feels really unfair and unjust,” she said. “People end up feeling very, very angry with society, abandoned, forgotten about, and mistreated.”

“The youth secure estate is not meeting the needs of either the children or society, actually, because we don’t want to churn out children who are angry adults.”

A contrasting model in Nottinghamshire

The findings contrast sharply with Clayfields House Secure Children’s Home, run by Nottinghamshire County Council.

Clayfields accommodates fewer than 20 young people, and its latest inspection revealed that educational outcomes were improving and the use of physical restraints was falling.

Nottinghamshire’s cabinet member for children and families, Councillor Rory Green, told LBC that education had to be central to helping young people build a future after custody.

“We’ve had a young person go on, become a chef, and he has full employment now,” he said. “What a beautiful picture of how you can have such a tough start to your life, have adults in such places believing in you, instilling in you education.”

Mr Green said isolation should not be used as a default response to difficult behaviour, reacting to the report from HMI, which didn’t include Clayfields in Nottinghamshire.

“If you’re going to get a young person to collect their thoughts, get them in a separate space environmentally, to talk through with the right adult,” he said.

“Using time frames that long is not acceptable, and there are ways around it. You’ve just got to creatively think outside the box and be flexible amongst your staff team.”

He said Nottinghamshire would be willing to share its practice, but added he could not be satisfied while children elsewhere were being failed.

“I’ll only feel content and proud when there’s a sense of assurance around the country,” he said. “We have to do better nationally.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Every young person in custody must feel safe so they can turn away from crime and build a better future, which ultimately makes our streets safer.

“That is why we are developing the Youth Custody Transformation Plan to make the youth estate safer, improve the care and support children receive, and create an environment where rehabilitation can succeed.

“Meanwhile, our Youth Justice White Paper will help strengthen earlier intervention to stop children from getting caught up in crime in the first place.”