Violence down at youth detention centre - governor

Violence at a young offender institution in West Yorkshire has "significantly reduced", a government inquiry has been told.

Mark Scott, governor of HMYOI Wetherby, said there had been a fall in both peer‑on‑peer violence and assaults on staff over the last 12 months.

He was giving evidence to a Justice Committee inquiry examining how children and young adults are treated in custody in England and Wales, and whether the system is safe and effective.

Scott's comments follow a highly critical report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) published earlier this year, which found high levels of violence at the site.

The facility, part of the Youth Custody Service, can hold up to 288 boys aged 15 to 18.

Scott told the committee that while the latest data illustrating the reduction in violence was yet to be published, it also showed a drop in the number of assaults involving weapons.

He said staff had previously become "burnt out with the constant levels of violence they were experiencing and dealing with".

He said there were "many reasons" behind the decline in incidents, including the introduction of a violence reduction team to ensure every incident was fully investigated.

The inquiry heard that violence at Wetherby had partly been driven by the way some units contained multiple groups of inmates, creating what Scott described as a "logistical problem" when trying to give all detainees access to the regime and activities.

"We've done a lot of work at Wetherby to make sure we can have communities within each unit," he said.

"We've successfully achieved that by working through conflict resolution, building bridges and addressing some of the conflicts children have had with one another."

Scott also said there had previously been low compliance with refresher courses on a mandatory training programme designed to teach staff how to de‑escalate incidents.

He said this had now been addressed through the introduction of a robust training plan.