Trained to Within an Inch of Their Lives

Flagellation fans in the party of John Whittingdale will rejoice to learn that the Government's hired thugs at secure training centres (child prisons, in Standard English) continue to adopt a thoroughly no-nonsense attitude while beating British values into our more recalcitrant junior resources. One institution where a fifteen-year-old was restrained to a vomit-assisted quietus more than a decade ago was still scoring highest for child abuse in 2014-15; and as one would expect, the three institutions which were most productive in such old-fashioned discipline were all run by those delightful people at G4S, with whom the Home Secretary has almost no marital connection whatever. The Ministry for Profitable Incarceration is so concerned at the abuses that it has introduced a new system of restraint which requires increased reporting; it is as yet unclear whether decreased suffocation was considered a possible pull factor for potential criminals. As for the sixty-five incidences of suffocation and/or serious injury inflicted in the cause of justice in half a dozen institutions over a single year, the Ministry has so little to hide that it has heavily redacted the relevant report.