Teen criminals to be sent to 'fortified school': Institution will aim to educate them out of crime

The new £85m 'fortified school' will hold 25 per cent of young offenders

Youth jails cost an average of £65,000 per prisoner per year



The young offenders school is likely to be opened by 2017



Hundreds of convicted yobs will be locked up in a new ‘fortified school’ designed to educate them out of crime.

The new £85million facility, described as a secure college by ministers, will hold around one in four of all young offenders.

It is hoped intensive education and training, combined with strict discipline, will help combat re-offending rates among young criminals.

Lock 'em up: The new £85million 'fortified school' will hold 25 per cent of convicted young offenders (stock image)

Around three-quarters of under-18s reoffend within a year of completing their sentence. At the moment, some young offenders spend as little as one school day a week in the classroom.

Youth jails, known as young offender institutions, are hugely expensive. The cost per prisoner per year is an average of £65,000 - more than the cost of a place at Eton.

Secure children’s homes, which are also used to house young criminals, cost even more - an average of £212,000 a year.

The new school, which is still in the planning stage, is likely to be opened by 2017.

It will hold young offenders aged between 12 and 17-years old.

For the 12 months to December 2011, 71 per cent of all young offenders committed at least one crime within a year of leaving custody - compared to 46 per cent of adults leaving prison.

Expensive crime: Youth jails cost an average of £65,000 per prisoner per year (stock image)

The Ministry of Justice said the longer hours for education would apply at all Young Offender Institutions.

In the last financial year, the department spent some £247 million on the detention of young offenders.

Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the Government had been successful at reducing the number of children sent to prison - but building a secure college would replicate ‘the mistakes of the past’.

‘Privately run ‘secure training centres’ were designed to educate, yet they have failed to reduce reoffending and children have died within their walls,’ she said.

‘Building a larger version of this failed model and calling it a ‘fortified school’ will lead to more crime and increased costs.

Launching the plan today, deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: ‘Criminals can’t go unpunished, but young people who’ve made mistakes and committed crime can’t simply be left on the scrapheap.

‘If we expect them to turn their lives around, we have to put their time inside to good use.

‘We need to make sure that time spent in custody is time well spent - an opportunity to turn lives around.

‘We can do this by helping young offenders develop the skills and training they need to break the destructive cycle of crime.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said it would double the number of hours, from an average of 12 to 24, of intensive schooling each inmate receives every week.

As well as classroom education, the school will be equipped with workshops so the teenagers can be helped to acquire useful skills.

Its focus on education and training means it will be run by a headteacher rather than a prison governor.

Mr Grayling said: ‘Nearly three-quarters of young offenders who leave custody reoffend within a year; clearly the system as it is at the moment isn’t working.

‘It’s right that the most serious or persistent young offenders face custody but we must use this time to tackle the root cause of their offending and give them the skills and self-discipline they need to gain employment or training upon release.

‘Young people themselves tell me that better education and training would help them get on to the right path and become law-abiding, productive and hardworking citizens.’

The college is due to be built in the grounds of Glen Parva prison in Wigston on the outskirts of Leicester.

There are around 1,200 young people held in custody in England and Wales.

Max Chambers, Head of Crime and Justice at Policy Exchange said: ‘In the last five years, the number of young offenders in prison has fallen substantially, with less serious criminals now avoiding custody.

‘Much of what is left in the youth prison estate is a hardcore group of young men who have been convicted of serious violence - a lot of which is gang-related.

‘Tackling these young offenders and turning them into productive members of society is a hugely difficult job, but it’s one government has to do better at.