ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The government has announced today that two secure schools are to be opened for teenage offenders in England and Wales.  The schools were a recommendation in a report from the former head teacher, Charlie Taylor, who was commissioned by Michael Gove to look into how the youth justice system could be improved and that report is due out tomorrow and Mr Taylor joins me now, I’m glad to say.  A very good morning to you Mr Taylor.  The broad thrust of this, is this looking at those reoffending rates in particular from young people convicted of crimes and saying we must do something about it?

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Absolutely.  At the moment we’re looking at reoffending rates of up to 70% for children who leave our current secure custodial estate and that’s the worst across the adult in every other part of the system so we really need to do something better for the children who are currently going in, in order ultimately to create fewer victims.

DM: But it’s not rocket science then to come up with a recommendation that really puts the time to which they are incarcerated or certainly restrained, to good use and give them some educational tools which they can use for the future.

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Without a doubt.  The idea that children, which we’ve seen in the past, will go into prison unable to read and will leave six, nine, ten months later still unable to read is extraordinary but also at the other end of the spectrum where you’ve got some really bright capable kids in there too who are not getting stretched and not then being able to do things like going on to university and go on to get really good jobs and become successful fulfilled members of the community.

DM: So you do think that is possible?  Because there is one big issue about this of course, kind of a mark of Caine, you have got a criminal record and that makes it very, very difficult then for the rest of your life – it’s not impossible of course – but to go on and do those kind of things.  Your employment record is clearly going to be affected, even access to higher and further education, have you questioned whether it is apt all the time to hand out these criminal records?

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Interestingly, as part of the review that’s coming out tomorrow, one of the recommendations I’m making is looking at, is recommending that the government looks further actually at the way that criminal records work because of course we need to protect the public from people who could potentially put them at risk but at the same time we need someone who makes a mistake when they are 14 or 15, for that not to be a burden for the rest of their life as well.

DM: Tell us more about the educational side of things then, what is the situation at the moment?  Youth prisons, in reality what kind of educational access are they getting?

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Well at the moment they are supposed to get 30 hours of education a week but at the moment they are getting an average of probably around 17 hours but what I think is critical here is that the governor himself or herself isn’t accountable for the quality of education that goes on within the prison, that’s contracted out elsewhere centrally and so you’ve got a governor who is trying to run a prison, trying to make things work but doesn’t have responsibility for the contracting out of education.  Now when I came in, for me as a head teacher that was just astonishing, the idea that I wouldn’t be responsible for recruiting my own staff, for training for my own staff, for setting the ethos and culture and of course being responsible for the quality of education.

DM: And of course the whole idea, you are questioning whether it’s appropriate to do it in a prison itself.  With your educational background you thought well what about secure schools and we are going to see two of those aren’t we?

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Yes, that’s right and the point here is our custodial estate is set up to say we’ll contain and control and if you’re lucky you’ll get a bit of education on the side and what I’m saying these are schools, fundamentally schools which are all about education, about change, about giving the kids the skills they need so that when they leave they don’t commit more offences but wrapped around that is security to ensure that the public are protected.  

DM: But why only two of them then?  You hope then that this will be experimental and then it can be rolled out across?

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Absolutely, we’d like to see more coming out in the next few years.

DM: The problem is again it’s always one of resources, this applies to the whole criminal justice system doesn’t it?  We’ve been hearing about so many problems in the adult prisons and a lot of it, certainly according to prison officers who work within there, it’s about the cuts.  Short term pain but you could have a long term gain if you invested.

CHARLIE TAYLOR:  That’s right, yes, and actually the government has already announced today they are investing further into the youth estate as well in order to improve the staff to child ratios which at the moment are still quite low.  Of course these things cost money but we spend a lot of money already, £70,000 a place in a young offenders institution, and the question I would ask is do we get value for money for that or is the 70% reoffending rate, is that really acceptable or can we do better with the money that we currently spend, and I think that we can.

DM:  Have you costed what a secure school costs?

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Yes, we’ve looked at some early costing models for secure schools and if you think that across the secure estate we have secure children’s homes at about £200,000 a place, that we’ve got secure training centres of which there are three like Medway that was highlighted last year, that costs around £140, 150,000 a place and then we have our young offender institutions at about £70,000 a place so actually there is quite a lot of money being spent here and what I’m recommending that we really focus on giving the children who are locked up what they need in order that they stop offending when they come out.

DM: And there also other issues at some of these young offender institutions aren’t there?  You must have witnessed them for yourself while you were carrying out this report, we hear some pretty awful stories about gang and drug culture.

CHARLIE TAYLOR: That’s right, some of the behaviour in there is really poor, some of the children are enormously difficult children without any doubt but if we continue to lock them up for long periods of time every day, if we fail to intervene with them to give them the skills, to really challenge them to do better and to turn their lives around, then we will simply get more of what we currently have and actually what our system does better than anything, and sadly at the moment, is not to prepare children for a life outside, it prepares children for a life in jail.

DM: Some people are going to say this is too soft, you are making life too cushy for them, they have committed crimes, it doesn’t matter how old they are, if they are above the age of criminal responsibility they should be first and foremost punished.

CHARLIE TAYLOR: I absolutely understand that and being locked up and taken away from home is the punishment but I think what’s critical here is the current system has enormously high reoffending rates and I think people who make that argument also need to be able to look victims in the eye and say we lock children up but we don’t do what needs to happen in order they are going to change.  My feeling is if children are locked up, if they have committed a serious offence, then this is an opportunity to help them to change their life so that in the future we have a lower cost to the taxpayer but critically lower costs socially as well.

DM: I can tell how passionate you are about this, do you have a real sense then now because of course it was the previous Justice Secretary that commissioned this, we have got a new Justice Secretary in Liz Truss, that there is complete buy-in from government?

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Absolutely, Liz Truss and I had a meeting just last week in which she was talking passionately about the possibilities for secure schools and how they can transform the youth custodial estate.

DM: But it’s whether they come up against the Treasury, as I talked about the short term pain for the long term gain, is the money going to be put behind it?

CHARLIE TAYLOR: Yes, yes, for the pilot certainly it is, yes.

DM: Charlie Taylor, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed and we await the publication of the full report tomorrow.