Luxury jail units for young women

KELLY BAILEY sits in a room painted pink and white, surrounded by photos of her friends and family, doing her cookery homework. In her designer sportswear and trainers, she looks like any other 18-year-old studying for exams. But she is in the depths of Holloway prison undergoing a revolutionary treatment programme for convicted teenagers.

The Independent was given an exclusive insight into the new unit, blueprint for a multi-million pound project to move more than 400 young female prisoners out of adult jails.

The Prison Service is being forced to respond to a legal challenge by a young female inmate who successfully argued it was unlawful to keep women under 21 in adult jail conditions.

Ten units are being set up across England and Wales to allow girls as young as 15 an environment to give them a greater chance of turning from crime. At Holloway in north London, a multi-disciplinary team of 20 staff in an annexe on the ground floor give intensive support to 40 girls aged 15 to 20. The girls have single cells - referred to as "rooms" - and wear the regulatory teenage uniform of designer sportswear and trainers. They have access to computers, art and pottery classes, a modern gymnasium and a swimming pool.

Bailey admits that she finds the surroundings "luxurious" compared with what she was expecting. "Before I came to prison I was told my head would be pushed down the toilet and brooms would be shoved here and there," she said. "I was really scared."

Her life has been hard. Bailey has suffered child abuse and rape, been addicted to amphetamines and solvents and worked as a prostitute. She has a five-year-old son she will see for the first time in 18 months this weekend when her mother brings him on a visit.

The recent scars on her wrists from a broken razor indicate how her cheeriness and optimism are vulnerable and can switch to chronic depressions, compounded by the recent deaths of her grandmother and her 17-year-old best friend, who overdosed on heroin.

Bailey is serving a 30-month sentence for an attempted robbery that she says she is deeply ashamed of, and hopes to take a catering course in Cardiff after release.

One-third of the women on the unit are mothers. Amy, 19, is due to go into labour in four days, when she will be moved into Holloway's specialist mother and baby unit. She says the new programme has taught her little, and she would prefer to be with older women who have more experience of motherhood.

After her arrest, Amy phoned her mother in the West Midlands to say that she was in London and tell her she had taken a secret holiday to Jamaica and was now on her way to prison. She was sentenced to three years for smuggling cannabis. She was also six weeks pregnant. Cut off by family and friends, she plans to move into a London housing association flat with her baby when she is released next year.

At 16, Sarah is one of the youngest in the unit. She has only 13 days to serve of her month-long sentence for threatening behaviour, and giggles excitedly at the prospect of returning to her flat and two-year-old son. She would have been "very worried" by the prospect of serving time with adult prisoners but confesses that she cannot be sure the experience of the new unit will keep her out of trouble.

The unit manager, principal officer Phil Richardson, said: "We are not saying none of them will reoffend. We are giving them the chance to make a judgement of whether they want to come back inside or change their lifestyle."

He said that 48 per cent of the girls believed the experience had improved their chances on release.

The girls are offered a wide-ranging programme of education classes, anger and stress management courses, and advice on contraception, healthy diets and improving sleep patterns disrupted by late nights, drugs and alcohol abuse.

The programme was drawn up after Lord Justice Flood ruled in 1997 that a teenage inmate at Risley, Cheshire, was being unlawfully held. The ruling, which applied only to sentenced prisoners, is extended to all young women, including those on remand, on trial, or awaiting sentence.