HMP Wetherby: Teen girl restrained and stripped twice by male prison staff, inspectors say

A vulnerable girl in a young offenders institution twice had her clothes removed under restraint by an all-male team of prison officers, a report says.

The inmate had been stripped to stop her using her clothes to harm herself at Wetherby Young Offender Institution.

The incident emerged in a report highly critical of the facility, which houses some of the UK's most complex children.

Its author Charlie Taylor said care for vulnerable young people - especially girls - was "not good enough".

The chief inspector of prisons told the BBC it costs nearly £250,000 a year to keep a child at Wetherby, adding: "With outcomes like this, there has to be a real question over whether this is working."

Inmates at Wetherby are between 15 and 18 and almost half have been in the care system during their lives. Some are beginning very long or life sentences.

There are seven girls imprisoned in England and Wales. When Wetherby was inspected in late 2023, three were held there - a small fraction of the institution's 165 inmates.

Wetherby saw almost 900 incidents of self-harm in the space of a year - the highest of any prison in England and Wales - and more than half were accounted for by the three girls.

The report found the "extremely high" levels of self-harm had led to "very high" levels of use of force and assaults on staff.

Link to full article here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68470183