The word “borstal” is actually a name
of a town near Rochester, Kent, in England. The town of Borstal hosted the
first institution for the detention of juvenile delinquents which started in
1902.
One may want to know what
actually brought about this kind of institution. Now let us cruise…
In the 18th Century in
the United Kingdom, prisons were administered by local justices. They were
numerous with most of them being small lock-ups which were corruptly run and
riddled with diseases. Several attempts were made in the United Kingdom to
unify these prisons that were under the local authority.
However, in 1821, the first Federal
prison was established at Millbank and it became the nucleus of a system of
prisons. Between 1821 and 1894, several adjustments were made in the United
Kingdom prison system starting with the establishment of a directorate which
was formed in 1850 under the leadership of Colonel Jebb. The directorate was
created to superintend over federal prisons which had been built in different
parts of the United Kingdom. In 1877, a new Act effectively established a
single prison system with central control of the federal and local prisons
vested in a prison commission with its chairman being Mr. du Cane.
Mr. du Cane operated a
militarized prison system where brutalization and penal labour were the order
of the day. This drew the ire of the society and the media who condemned how Mr.
du Cane operated the prisons. The unpopular policy of du Cane gave rise to such
misgivings that a Departmental Committee under Mr. Herbert Gladstone was set up
to investigate prison conditions in 1895. The committee swung into action and
came out with a report which served as guidelines for the present United
Kingdom prison system, and in which the idea of the borstal institution was
birthed.
Due to the comprehensiveness of
this report and the need to salvage the system from public and media scrutiny,
du Cane was sacked and replaced with Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise who as well as
founding the Borstal system in 1902, implemented many of the recommendations of
the Gladstone Report which are mostly humane and liberal. And that was how the
borstal system which has been adopted by many countries in the world came to be
in the town of Borstal, near Rochester, Kent, England.
As provided by the 1962 Borstal
Institutions and Remand Centers Act, borstal institutions are specifically
designated for the institutionalization of offenders between the ages of 16-21.
In practice, only the more serious juvenile offenders are committed to the
borstal. In the Borstal, offenders are classified on the basis of their age,
physical and mental health, length of stay period, degree of delinquency and
their character. Besides, factors like sequence of the delinquency,
possibilities of functioning as a contamination risk, requirements of custody, educational
and vocational training needs, background, possibilities of social adjustment,
prospects after release and rehabilitation needs are considered.
Presently, there are three
functional borstal training institutions in Nigeria located in Kaduna, Ilorin
and Abeokuta. This is considered to be grossly inadequate as juvenile
delinquency has continued to be on the rise in Nigeria. Borstal Institutions
are run by the Nigerian Prisons Service. Borstal is sometimes used loosely to
apply to other kinds of youth institution or reformatory such as Juvenile
Reformatory Homes, Approved Schools and Youth Detention Centres.
The court sentence for juveniles
is officially called "borstal training" and juveniles who have served
this sentence are not considered as ex-convicts. In the United Kingdom, the
Criminal Justice Act 1982 has since abolished the borstal system and in its
place, introduced youth custody centres instead. However, the borstal system is
still operated by many commonwealth countries.
Did you learn a thing here?
Research by DSP Ugwuoke Kelvin
Abuchi, State Prison Headquarters, Jos, Plateau state.
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