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@misc{jarmanScandalReform196020162018,
author = {Jarman, Ben},
title = {Scandal and Reform, 1960-2016: Can Better Policies Guarantee
Child Welfare in Secure Custody?},
date = {2018-10-18},
url = {https://www.historyandpolicy.org/index.php/policy-papers/papers/scandal-and-reform-1960-2016-better-policies-child-welfare-secure-custody},
langid = {en-GB},
abstract = {Recent scandals at Medway Secure Training Centre have
exposed weaknesses in the legal protections available to children in
custody in the youth justice system. This is despite the fact that
since the late 1990s, safeguarding and child protection in places of
child custody have been significantly reformed and expanded in
scope. Under new regimes of safeguarding, policy compliance has
sometimes become the priority, with the effectiveness of
properly-applied policy not being questioned. In this context, new
and developing risks of abuse have gone unrecognised. Historical
research helps us to see how past safeguards, which had previously
been assumed to be effective, had in fact broken down. This usually
happened not only as the result of misconduct by “bad apples”.
Instead, the actions of “bad apples” usually occurred within
unhealthy institutional cultures in which staff used abusive methods
such as bullying and violence to secure legitimate outcomes such as
the maintenance of order. Such methods were often resorted to at
times of institutional pressure, for example during periods of
overcrowding or budgetary constraint. Those charged with managing
and monitoring conditions in youth custody often gave such methods
their tacit endorsement, evaluating them not in terms of individual
children’s welfare, but in terms of institutional priorities. In
such morally compromised climates, “bad apples” were able to pursue
wholly illegitimate and indefensible ends – such as the sexual abuse
and exploitation of children and young people – with impunity.
Understanding the cultural contexts of past abuse highlights the
dangers of complacency regarding today’s safeguarding policies.
Despite the more proactive safeguards implemented since 2000,
unhealthy occupational cultures – featuring confusion over
institutional goals, low staff morale, hierarchical management
structures, and institutional isolation – have not been eliminated
from the secure estate. The implication is that custodial
institutions for children are inherently risky environments,
particularly where they are not explicitly organised around an ethos
of care, or where wider organisational priorities (such as the need
for cost efficiencies) clash with that ethos. Youth custody
therefore must remain a minimal last resort, used where there is no
non-custodial alternative.}
}