University News Last updated 06 January 2015
A fascinating insight into 1930’s style youth detention centres, is the focus of a new ITV series starting this week.
‘Bring Back Borstal’ will see a group of young offenders put through a challenging regime in a recreation of the often controversial Borstal style regime.
The month long social experiment, led by leading criminologist and Birmingham City University Professor David Wilson, will discover whether the hard work, education and exercise programmes used in a Borstal would be beneficial to today’s young offenders.
“Borstal was an incredibly successful penal sentence” states Professor Wilson. “Seventy per cent of the young men in the 1930’s who went through Borstal never went back to prison again.”
Taking on the role of Prison Governor in the TV series, Professor Wilson adds: “This is a tough regime. We are not locking up these young men and allowing them to sit in their cells watching television or playing PlayStation.
“I feel that we’ve reached a stage where we don’t really give young offenders who go to prison, opportunities to work or learn. We’re saying that being active on the sports field, or in the classroom, or at work, will ultimately help them have a better stake in the community when they return.”
Borstal in the 1930s was a much-feared institution designed to reform young offenders by enforcing compulsory work, education, discipline and intense physical activity. In its heyday, it was a system that worked, with low levels of re-offending and a low financial cost.
In this unique experiment, 14 young troublemakers, half of whom have criminal convictions, have volunteered to become borstal boys, spending four weeks in a castle in Northumberland to bring the borstal back to life. Between them they have around 60 criminal convictions and many have served time in prison.
Prison Governor Professor David Wilson, ex-army man Chief Officer Dugan and matron Jenny Molloy, will oversee the troublemakers to see if they can break their cycle of bad behaviour.
‘Bring Back Borstal’ is a four-part series and starts on Thursday 8 January at 9pm on ITV.