The notion of a secure college is flawed. Nobody except Ministers thinks it is a good idea—no educationalist, nobody who works in young offender institutions, nobody who works in the criminal justice system and nobody who campaigns for improvements in the way we treat children and young people in the criminal justice system. It seems to be based on a notion that going off to boarding school is a good thing, but this is not going to be like Eton. It will bring together large numbers of young people from very disturbed backgrounds who have committed serious offences. That is not a good idea.
Let us think about many of the young people who are in custody. Many have spent time in care and are likely to have had an absent parent. They have probably experienced neglect or abuse, and the prevalence of mental illness is high. Some 86% of young people in the criminal justice system have been excluded from school, 23% have learning difficulties and 36% have borderline learning difficulties. Boys aged 15 to 17 in prison are 18 times more likely to commit suicide than children of the same age in the community, and 11% of children in prison have attempted suicide. Simply trying to put knowledge into these young people without addressing their fundamental issues is doomed to failure. Young people need to be in the right place psychologically before they can start to learn. Simply trying to shove knowledge into young people who are disturbed, who have come from bad backgrounds and whose mental health is rubbish will not work; they need to be in the right place if they are to learn.
The average length of time spent in custody is 79 days, so how are those young people really going to learn a great deal in that period? The Minister talked about young people learning to read in a short period of time. There might be some successes in basic literacy and numeracy, but I do not see how it can work for their wider education process. We will be putting them in a college many miles away from home and the other support services they will need after their time in custody. They will then, after 79 days, have to reintegrate into their old school, or into a new school, and into those support services, which will not be on the doorstep to help them with their drug problems, mental health problems or all the other issues that young people face.
In Committee it was indicated to us that the teaching staff will not necessarily be qualified teachers. We are not sure about that, because the Minister will not tell us. The Government cannot just say that they will leave it until they have had a competition for people to apply to run the institution. Surely to goodness they need to lay down some firm guidelines on the qualifications and experience that those who will be working with the young people should have.
Why on earth will the Government not look at models that actually work? They should look to Scandinavia, where learning environments are in the community, where people down the street will not even know that the house on the corner is a youth custody premises, and where young people are treated holistically so that not just their education is dealt with, but all the other problems that have lead them to offend and have messed up their lives. They need that whole range of support services. We need that sort of therapeutic community, not a place where 320 young people will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said, vie for attention and to prove who is the most macho.
I do not believe that a secure college is a place for 15 to 17-year-olds, but it is very definitely not a place for girls and younger children, who should be in the community. The therapeutic programmes that work for young people are those that are close to the community and that are small and specific. As my hon. Friend said, so many of the young women who end up in the penal system have suffered sexual abuse and other forms of physical abuse. The Government should rule out ever
putting them in a place with 320 young boys, which would make the experience awful for them.
I do not believe that we will change reoffending by locking up 320 young people together. I do not believe that we will change educational outcomes for those young people by doing that. I really wish that the Government would accept the Lords amendment, but I also wish that they would reconsider the whole proposal. If nobody thinks that it is going to work, why are the Government arrogant enough to believe that it will? Surely they should start listening to the professionals, to those who work with young people and understand them, and not go ahead with the college, and they should certainly never contemplate putting young children and women into that place.