G4S plc reports that it has begun a process to sell its UK Children’s Services business. That comprises 13 children’s homes and its contracts to manage two Secure Training Centres at Medway and Oakhill.
The multi-national security firm said that the wellbeing and education of the children in its care will remain our priority until such time as an orderly transition to a new operator has been completed. G4S UK Children’s Services had revenues of about £40m in the year to December 2015.
Medway Secure Training Centre was the subject of a BBC TV Panorama programme in January that led to a new interim Director at Medway; the centre director, Ralph Marchant, stepped down with immediate effect. An independent review was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice, which G4S said it’s committed to supporting.
The Panorama episode ‘Teenage Prison Abuse Exposed’, of January 11, included footage of violent incidents involving staff, away from the view of CCTV cameras. The prison reform charity The Howard League for Penal Reform after the broadcast said it had warned for years about the systemic problems in secure training centres; introduced in the late 1990s alongside the Detention and Training Order, a short prison sentence for children followed by community supervision.
On the G4S news of the sale, Andrew Neilson, Director of Campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “We welcome this news from G4S, as the company’s sale would include the management of two secure training centres at Medway and Oakhill. These child jails have been the focus of much controversy, not least the recent BBC Panorama documentary into abuse by staff at Medway.
“There is now an opportunity developing to close the secure training centres down completely. These centres are a failed model and this wise withdrawal from the market by G4S should not be followed up new private security companies coming in to replace them, with dubious track records abroad in the treatment of people in custody.”
