Memorandum submitted by HM Young Offenders'
Institute Rochester
INTRODUCTION
1. HMYOI Rochester is the convicted Young
Offender Institution for the South East and holds up to 392 convicted
young male offenders who, in the majority, are serving sentences
of less than four years. It also holds prisoners serving up to
six years but, with limited parole facility, this is difficult
unless prisoners have their sentence underway. Prisoners are usually
allocated to Rochester from HMYOI Feltham, HMP Elmley, HMYOI Aylesbury
and HMP Chelmsford. The majority are released from Rochester to
the London area, Essex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex. This is a small
number of foreign nationals.
2. I have been employed by HM Prison Service
since 1999, the first three years after my training as Head of
Prisoner Management at HMP and YOI Cookham Wood which held female
adult and young offenders at the time. In 2003 I transferred to
HMYOI Rochester as Head of Activities, then Head of Learning and
Skills with responsibility for developing learning and training
opportunities throughout the establishment. Before joining HM
Prison Service I worked for three providers of education to prisons
as Deputy Education Manager at HMP Elmley and Education Manager
at HMP Blantyre House. I started my career in Adult and Community
Education with Kent County Council.
3. ASSESSMENT
OF PRISONERS'
NEEDS ON
CONVICTION
— Basic Skills Agency (BSA) screening
test is paper based and time consuming to mark.
— Results are not speedily transmitted
to the receiving establishment leading to re-sits whenever there
is a move.
— Screening for special educational
needs including dyslexia is not available in all establishments.
— Assessment of Special Education Needs
is not part of the Education Contract.
4. EFFECTIVENESS
OF LOCAL
CONTRACTING ARRANGEMENTS
— Isolation of prison education teams
when their employer is far away.
— Lack of staff and curriculum development.
— Inflexibility of the contract (small
groups and one to one affect performance indicators).
— No penalties available to the establishment
to improve contractor's performance except default which inevitably
is extremely disruptive to the regime.
— Fast turnover of prison service managers
of the education contract and often lack of understanding of how
to use the contract to get the best for an establishment
5. PROVISION
OF APPROPRIATE
TRAINING FACILITIES
WITHIN PRISONS
— Accommodation is sometimes poor with
no resources available to improve it.
— Recruitment of instructors in trades
such as plumbing is very difficult.
— Instructors frequently work on their
own with no colleagues in their own trade to exchange good practice.
6. ROLE OF
PRISON STAFF
IN SUPPORTING
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES
— Crucial to promote learning and training
as a worthwhile activity.
— Difficult when many prison officers'
basic skills levels are low.
— Competent and enthusiastic officers
often cannot get involved because of staff shortage.s
7. LINKS WITH
EMPLOYERS AND
EMPLOYER LED
INITIATIVES
— Extremely useful to provide training
and employment during sentence and after release (for instance
TRANSCO scheme).
— Difficult to achieve when there is
no resettlement unit as prisoners who go out are put under pressure
by their fellow prisoners to bring back unauthorised items or
drugs into an establishment.
8. CONTINUING
SUPPORT AND
GUIDANCE ON
RELEASE, INCLUDING
COORDINATION WITH
LOCAL PROVIDERS
— The current education contract does
not include support and guidance on release.
— BSA results and education and training
achievements are passed on to the supervising probation officer
for YOs. Many adult prisoners do not have a supervising probation
officer.
— Education staff, Kent Connexions
and Job Centre staff offer help to locate adequate training opportunities
on release and access to funding.
9. EDUCATION,
TRAINING AND
SUPPORT FOR
THOSE ON
PROBATION
— I have no knowledge of this.
10. CONCLUSION
— Present organisation of prison education
is cumbersome and inflexible with considerable sums of money locked
into inflexible contracts.
— Exciting and engaging activities
need to be available to engage reluctant learners.
— Little opportunity to provide the
above when there is little money outside the education contract.
— Shortage of good, qualified and up-to-date
basic skills teachers.
— Shortage of instructional officers
with a practical trade.
— Both education staff and instructors'
morale and enthusiasm is affected by the uncertainty caused by
REX and forthcoming developments.
— NOMS will provide new opportunities
for managing an individual in and out of custody, without constantly
repeating the same tests.
— In order to meet the individual needs
of prisoners, establishments need to have a menu of education
and training options available to them, some inside, some outside
the establishment, with the possibility of booking a particular
service whenever it is needed and for however many prisoners it
is needed.
— Establishments need to become much
more part of the local "learning and working community".
June 2004
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