THE majority of children in the country’s juvenile correctional system are falling through the cracks of the educational system, according to a recent report from the Department of Correctional Services (DCS).

Between January and December 2021, the DCS said, of the 75 children who were on correctional order and enrolled in a public school, almost three-quarters, or 53 of them, were either expelled, suspended or stopped going to school.

The figures indicate that children who find themselves at odds with the law could be facing an educational crisis. The DCS says there is no established pathway for children under 18 to return to the public school system.

A breakdown from the DCS shows that this was the case for all 23 who were at the South Camp facility; 11 out of 16 at the Rio Cobre high security (formerly Hill Top juvenile correctional centre) facility; and 19 out of 36 at the Rio Cobre medium security facility. The reasons, the DCS said — in a report to the Human Resource and Social Development Parliamentary committee, on Wednesday at Gordon House — are that the schools which the children usually attend may refuse to readmit them due to the very reasons that caused them to be absent from school.

The department said, “There is no established pathway to return to the public school system for children under 18 years. A profile of the children admitted to the DCS in 2021 revealed that most were suspended or expelled from school or stopped attending classes. In some cases, the family is unwilling to receive the child in the household. Without family support and guidance, the child is left to survive independently, and, in that situation, there is a high probability that the child will reoffend.”

In a bid to cauterise the matter of reintegrating the juveniles into the public school system, the DCS urged the education ministry to resume full responsibility for delivering education to this group in the correctional system.

“It may be easier to reintegrate the children into the public school system upon discharge from DCS as the teachers themselves could make the recommendations to have them returned,” the department suggested.

The Lt Colonel Gary Rowe-led department wants the education ministry to recruit and remunerate teachers, including specialists, to resolve the problems related to pay, as well as monitor and supervise the work of the teachers, thus removing the responsibility from the DCS.

Further, it was pointed out that the correctional system is suffering from a severe shortage of teachers, which has hampered the provision of structured academic programmes to juveniles, while its vocational training courses have failed to receive national certification due to the inability of the facilities to meet the necessary standards.

Commissioner of Corrections Lt Col Gary Rowe said, if not fixed, “it will hobble the rehabilitation efforts for reintegration of our children”.“The establishment speaks to our teachers being qualified at a certificate level [but] what we have found is that the wider qualification of teachers now graduating speaks to a BSc level, but the pay scale has not changed, so where we have a high attrition [is] among our teachers; vacant posts remain unfilled for quite a long time,” he explained.Between 2016 and 2018, 16 teachers left the job, and now 30, out of 48, teaching posts are vacant.The prison boss explained that talks were held in 2020 with the education and national security ministries to try to improve the salaries and allowances of corrections teachers, to bring them in line with the salary packages of those in the regular school system, but those discussions stalled when the novel coronavirus hit.“Separate and apart from schools out here in the civilian world, the space that our teachers have to work with in the DCS, we believe some special consideration should be made as an incentive to encourage the right qualification to come and interact with our wards,” the commissioner said.He explained that although the DCS has a formal arrangement with the HEART/NSTA Trust, the infrastructure in the correctional facilities is badly in need of upgrading to meet the standards for vocational courses.“There are certain trade skills that have to be practised, and if we don’t have the equipment you can’t say that you are qualified; similarly for mechanics, for welding, and so on,” he stated, while stressing that wards are nevertheless continuously engaged, despite the shortfalls.

In the meantime, Deputy Commissioner of Rehabilitation and Probation Aftercare Dr Marc Thomas insisted that the curriculum is parallel to that of the regular school system, although the DCS’s report says there is a “lack of a structured education system to deliver the standard education programmes for wards”.“We offer what we have because at no point should a child not be engaged. The issue we have is that we can’t expand the offerings that we have, because of the absence of the teachers, so we turn our hand and make fashion, we utilise the teachers that we have,” he stated.

At the same time, there is no tracking system by the DCS for wards when they leave the system and reintegrate with the rest of the society.

The members expressed grave concern about this gap, pointing out that basic tabs need to be kept, in order to assess whether some wards may be moving on to “big prison”, and by extension the effectiveness of the juvenile rehabilitation process.

Moreover, the DCS also recommended that new correctional centres be built and designed for the purpose of rehabilitation, as the current poor state of the buildings makes it difficult to deliver reformation programmes.

“The building stock of juvenile institutions is old, outdated and falling apart. None of the four centres was built for purpose,” the DCS pointed out, noting that the Hill Top Juvenile Correctional Centre (closed in October 2021) was a former military camp site; Metcalfe Street Secure Juvenile Centre (MSSJC) was retrofitted from an existing building; the South Camp Juvenile Correctional and Remand Centre for girls is a former adult correctional centre for males, and Rio Cobre Juvenile Correctional Centre (RCJCC), although built in the 1980s, was not designed to international standards,” the report said.

DCS also noted that the electrical and plumbing networks are in a state of disrepair mainly due to ageing, and from tampering by male wards. Boys often tamper with the roofs, trying to escape, resulting in recurring expenses to fix the damage.

Furthermore, it said the entrance doors to all the dorms at RCJCC are in breach of the national building code, and that at the MSSJC the dorms are windowless, resulting in poor ventilation. Other critical problems such as the need for more dormitory spaces to separate the younger children from the older ones, to protect them from abuse, as well as for disciplinary purposes, health reasons and for holding or orientation of new admissions, were outlined. Commissioner Rowe attributed this need for protection to bullying and children being from diverse backgrounds, when asked by the committee if there were gangs in the centres.

Meanwhile, the submission outlined that medical services in the centres are also woefully lacking.

The DCS said currently the medical team provides limited medical and dental care, and there is great need for mental health support.

At the moment, this is dealt with by two full-time psychologists and another two engaged on a sessional basis. Also, there are only two sessional psychiatrists scheduled to provide counselling to the population of between 190 and 200 children in the DCS.“They prepare reports for the children’s courts, leaving little time to deal with the children [and] while they are in custody the children present with different types and levels of mental illnesses including bipolar disorder, sleeping disorder, depression and suicide ideation. Some have attempted to harm themselves and others; most are subject to some form of sexual, physical or verbal abuse prior to admission,” the report said.