Conclusion 3

Staffing at Rainsbrook was affected by covid-19, but so was the number of children at the centre, down to around half of capacity. The staff-to-child ratio was broadly unaffected and additional financial resource was provided to MTC by the Ministry of Justice. We cannot fathom why children were left in their cells for 23.5 hours a day after that practice had been identified and criticised and had supposedly ceased. Even more, we cannot understand why that fact went unnoticed and unaddressed by managers and monitors whose offices were two minutes’ walk from the children’s cells. It seems extraordinary that MTC managers and YCS monitors did not leave their offices to find out for themselves the condition in which the children in their care were kept.