Children held in a condemned youth jail for vulnerable offenders have been moved into unsuitable alternative custody, a committee has been told.
About 30 children previously held at the privately run Rainsbrook secure training centre are being transferred into alternative custody arrangements following calls for urgent action over problems at the unit.
The government was urged to step in after it emerged that children were being locked up during the coronavirus pandemic for more than 23 hours a day at the site, which is near Rugby, Warwickshire.
The prisons and probation minister, Alex Chalk, told MPs on the justice committee on Tuesday that at least half the children had been transferred to young offender institutions (YOIs), jails for which previously they would have been considered too vulnerable.
Secure training centres take in more vulnerable offenders and have a higher staff-to-child ratio than YOIs.
The reminder of the children have been split between secure children’s homes and another secure training centre, Oakhill, near Milton Keynes.
Chalk told the committee that the future of Rainsbrook and the involvement of its private operator, MTC, were now under consideration.
The chair of the committee, Bob Neill, the Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, challenged the minister over the decision to transfer children from a secure training centre to a YOI. “Surely that’s the wrong place to put them?” he said.
Chalk said the numbers held in YOIs were much lower than previously, creating a regime that was “closer” to that of secure training centres.
The justice secretary, Robert Buckland, had previously described the situation as an “unacceptable failure” and MPs increased pressure for the site to be taken back under public control. MTC’s facilities in the US have been subjects of similar controversy.
Rainsbrook can hold up to 87 children, aged between 12 and 17, whether serving custodial sentences or on remand from the courts.
The schools watchdog, Ofsted, the Inspectorate of Prisons and the Care Quality Commission issued a rare urgent notification to Buckland in December 2020 over “continued poor care and leadership” at the site and over concerns that vulnerable children were being subjected to a “bleak regime”.
The inspectors issued the notification after finding that little progress had been made, despite assurances two months earlier that immediate action would be taken, and concerns that newly admitted children, some as young as 15, were being locked in their bedrooms for 14 days and only allowed out for 30 minutes a day.