A recent Ofsted report has judged Medway Secure Training Centre (MSTC) to be ‘Inadequate’, the lowest score awarded by Ofsted.

The Centre, a young offenders institute In Evelyn Road, Rochester, was found to be putting children at risk of harm despite a serious case review following the BBC Panorama in 2016.

MSTC will close in Spring 2020 and be reopened as the country’s first Secure School.

Cllr Clive Johnson, Medway Labour Shadow Cabinet Member for Children and Young People said, ‘It is completely unacceptable that very little has changed at Medway Secure Training Centre, despite three Ofsted inspections since 2017.

‘Ofsted has found that children are still “at risk of harm” and are even being denied hospital treatment.

‘I’m seriously concerned about the government’s decision to turn MSTC, an institution beset by systemic failures over the last few years, into the country’s first Secure School.

‘By commissioning Oasis Charitable Trust – an organisation which appears to lack any experience in looking after children in a residential setting – to run the new Secure School, the government is setting itself up to repeat the same mistake it made by giving G4S the contract to run MSTC.

‘If the government is serious about ensuring the new Secure School will help rehabilitate and reintegrate these children back into society, then they need to learn from their mistakes and commit to treating these children with dignity and respect.’

Cllr Alex Paterson, Medway Labour & Co-operative Councillor for Rochester West said ‘It’s estimated that it’s five times more expensive to lock up young offenders than it would be to send them to Eton.

‘The great irony is that in my experience of meeting young offenders in Rochester, many of them have the clear potential to lead productive, fulfilled and law-abiding lives given the opportunity.

‘However as a society we are complicit in a system which often merely brutalises vulnerable young people, entrenches those behaviours which got them into trouble in the first place and prepares them for a life of crime.

‘That is not only a waste of taxpayers’ money, it is a waste of human lives and does nothing to make our streets any safer.

‘Sadly, the empty rhetoric on crime we have heard from Home Office ministers recently suggests none of those lessons have been learned. It will give me no satisfaction if, as a result, history repeats itself in Medway under the new provider.’