I didn’t know about this extraordinarily brutal killing until Frances put it on my timeline last night. I then spent some time reading into the evidence from the inquest. I am absolutely disgusted that these G4S employees were not prosecuted & instead they were *promoted*. https://twitter.com/francescrook/status/1384617528467628032

Gareth died in 2004, he would be 32 now. Rainsbrook (where he was killed) did not get any better. G4S were still being hauled over the coals by the time I was on my feet defending youths in Youth Court. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/06/rainsbrook-private-prison-youth-jail-ofsted-cqc-force-restraint

It is now run by US firm MTC, who took it over in 2016. Presumably they took the staff on as well, because is has remained problematic ever since. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56340344.amp

I knew how bad it was when I was representing youths every week. I recall one young lad in for breach of his Youth Rehabilitation Order. He may have had a new offence too, I can’t remember now.

He was very young and hadn’t been to custody before. He was really cocky at first.

His mum was with him. She kept telling me she had ‘given up’ and he ‘had to go’ to prison. She clearly had absolutely no idea what that meant & nor did he.

He had no respect for her and was playing the big man - but he was tiny, and his offences were low level. It was the usual

story - he had a crap home life, no schooling, no discipline or structure, a cocktail of odds stacked against this boy who seemed to be scrambling through life as best he could, pretty much on his own.

I had a chat with the youth offending team worker about what the plan was for him and found out that because he was so unsupported & disrupted at home, he had stopped engaging with them & the recommendation was a short detention and training order (youth custody). At Rainsbrook.

Rainsbrook had been all over the news in recent years as being a hotbed of serious abuse and assaults by staff and other youths on vulnerable children separated from their families; the abuse was sexual as well as violent.

The word “Rainsbrook” meant nothing to this young man, nor his mother. They had no idea. It wasn’t a local facility - due to the national shortage of detention places, it was pot luck where a youth would go, often hours from their family, and Northants was a very long way away.

But it was the only place with a space. The YOT worker went a bit pale when she told me. I felt sick too. We both sat him down, away from his mum, and told him that custody was actually horrible and that he needed to pull his finger out and start engaging with his order.

The story doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite a valiant effort by both me and the YOT worker before the bench - and despite his courtroom attitude change, we were ordered to move to a secure court.

That meant I had to walk this little lad from the nice friendly youth courtroom to a proper grown up court with a glass dock because he was about to be taken into custody and driven in a van hours from our town.

He realised on the way to the courtroom and his bottom lip started to wobble. He took my arm. I was barely holding it together. I was terrified for him. My stomach was in knots.

In the new courtroom the bench came in - I had another go at keeping him out. Why not? So did the YOT worker, bless her. By this time he was weeping behind the glass and calling for his mum. It was awful. The bench resisted our efforts and sentenced him to custody.

He had to be dragged screaming from the dock into the cells while his mother cried out for them to let her son go.

(I know, I know.)

I looked over to the YOT worker who was crying openly in court. Tears ran down my face. It’s the first and last time I have ever cried in court.

I didn’t sleep very well that night.

I saw him a few months later, and he had visibly changed. I didn’t dare ask him what it was like. I knew. I just told him I was sorry I couldn’t keep him out. He told me it wasn’t my fault.

Having been hardened to custody in the worst possible way at Rainsbrook, his offending escalated and he became a proper criminal. He soon graduated to the adult court and then crown court. A life ruined.

Victims of crime created.

These institutions have the ABILITY, if they want to, to turn children’s lives around. To show them that there is a better way to live, with structure and healthy discipline, with support and love and education. But they don’t.

They are crime schools of pain, suffering & profit.

They have so, so much to answer for.