Boys behind bars

Rioting, suicide and a racist murder have made Feltham young offenders' institution the most notorious in the country. Now it has a new governor - its fifth in 18 months - but can he turn around the prison they call 'a finishing school for career criminals'? Paul Kelso crosses the wire.

On the wall of the governor's office at Feltham young offenders' institution there are three picture hooks. Normally the governors' roll hangs here - an oak board bearing the names of those who have occupied perhaps the hottest seat in the prison service. On a chill morning earlier this week the hooks were vacant. "It's down in the workshop having my name added. The paint's not dry yet," says Nick Pascoe, the new boss of Britain's most notorious youth prison. From the window, through a thick mist, we can make out the top of the steel-mesh fence crowned with rolled razor wire that marks the boundaries of his estate; 96 acres housing up to 700 of the most disturbed, deprived and dangerous young men in the country.

The office may as well have a revolving door. Pascoe, who started three weeks ago, is the fifth man to take the job in the past 18 months. He was tempted back from his job at a private jail by Martin Narey, the director general of the prison service, whose arrival we await. "I shall tell him I returned the company car this morning," Pascoe says with a wry grin. "That's the ultimate sacrifice, isn't it?"

Having to run his own car will be the least of Pascoe's worries. Within days of the new governor taking up his post a former Feltham prisoner, Robert Stewart, was convicted of murdering his 19-year-old Asian cellmate, Zahid Mubarek. Stewart, a 20-year-old racist psychopath with a cross and the letters RIP tattooed on his forehead, beat Zahid to death with a table leg in their 7ft by 10ft cell in the middle of the night in March. An internal inquiry found that ample evidence of Stewart's racist, violent tendencies and declining mental health had been missed or ignored by prison staff.

Stewart's conviction was the latest event in a miserable year for the jail. On a Saturday morning at the end of October, tensions spilled over and officers lost control of a unit housing 60 prisoners. In the four hours it took to regain control, the wing was trashed. In September, Kevin Henson, 16, ended his short, tragic life with a noose hung from an exposed pipe in his cell. Pascoe's task is to turn Feltham around. It will not be easy.

Serving every court in London and most of those in the south-east, Feltham is the largest young offenders' institution in the country; it sees 30,000 boys and young men between the age of 15 and 21 pass through its gates every year. Some stay briefly on remand; others are at the start of a long prison career. Feltham is short-staffed, 23-hour-a-day bang-ups are common, morale is low and the institution's reputation stinks. One experienced youth worker dismisses it as "a finishing school for career criminals".

Pascoe thinks of the place in less absolute terms. "Some of these men are dangerous and sophisticated criminals; others are totally unsophisticated and very damaged. The public expectation is that if you put them in a prison they will never reoffend. That's unrealistic. As a society have to decide what the purpose of imprisonment is - what do we want it to do?"

What Narey wants it to do is educate. "Of a total prison population of 60,000, around 40,000 are unemployable. What I want to do is give them basic education and constructive employment," he says in soft Teesside tones. "If they haven't got a job, of course they'll reoffend. They have no choice."

We are here to look at Feltham's new £6m education and reception unit for juvenile offenders, the 15- to 18-year-olds who are Narey's priority. Opened in August, it is a pristine pale-blue building with classrooms that any inner-city headmaster would give his chalk and board for. The smell of paint still lingers, not yet chased away by the ubiquitous prison odour of chips, rolling tobacco and sweat. The backing track of prison life - shouts and footfalls, jangling keys and slamming steel doors - is left outside. Narey grasps the hand of every officer and volunteer we pass and gives them the opportunity to bend his ear.

Inside the classrooms, groups of a dozen are studying information technology and basic literacy and numeracy. Most of the kids here got nothing out of school except bitter experience. Now the teachers at Feltham are trying to capitalise on the one advantage they have: a captive audience. The work is a grind and the potential for disruption massive, yet by tiny degrees the teacher maintains order and attention. One lad with a reputation for trouble is multiplying at the blackboard. He takes the arrival of the director general and friends as an opportunity to switch off. He tries to grab a handful of forms, then tries to sit when the teacher wants him to stand. She is having none of it and eventually he finishes his sums.

"What you just saw there was a little triumph," says Narey when we leave. "That lady got the lad to pay attention using nothing more than communication skills. Hundreds of potential incidents every day can be defused like that."

But this new education unit is far from the whole story at Feltham. On the other side of the fence that separates the juveniles from the 18- to 21-year-olds, the huge demands placed on Feltham are clear. In units housing up to 60 lads, half can be banged up all day, unlocked only to collect their meals.

Swallow unit is where Mubarek was killed. The cells run on two decks along two walls, and facing them are the servery and the officers' control room. In between is the association area, with a pool table, its baize almost worn through. The lads emerge for lunch. "We have to unlock slow because we've some characters in at the moment," says an officer. "They don't all get on as we might like." Those who are first in the queue collect a plate of thin chips; pale peas; a choice of pie, fish or corned beef; a bread roll and an apple. How's the food? "Shit," an inmate replies.

The cells have brightly painted red, blue and yellow doors. Inside they are a dreary cream, although an inmate painting team is busy brightening them up. The sheets are brown. One lad says his window leaks and points to some brown stains. "That's spit - people used it to stick posters to the walls. I can't get it off." Prisoners have to be inventive to stick up their lad-mag pin-ups. Toothpaste is a current favourite, although Narey encountered a man at Parkhurst who used semen. "Very effective," he says, with a grimace.

In cell 38, where Mubarek was killed, the two beds are 3ft apart. The toilet is in a doorless alcove. The only ventilation is the barred window, of which one pane opens. The lads in there now have a chess board set up on a table like the one Stewart snapped the leg from to kill Mubarek. They seem to get on.

So did Stewart and Zahid, according to the wing officers, most of whom were traumatised by the death. "When something like that happens the first thing you do is ask yourself, 'What more could I have done? Where there signs?' We saw his tattoo and you have hunches, but they honestly seemed to get on OK. They were together six weeks before he done it," says one officer. "The guilt is crippling... and then you know someone will be along looking for a scapegoat." Narey, listening hard, nods in agreement, but while the director general chats to some lads, the officer opens up. "We haven't the staff to get to know these lads properly. They're locked up 22-and-a-half hours a day then we unlock the doors. It can be like throwing a match into a box of fireworks."

A senior officer at Feltham, with 12 years' experience, explains the hidden cost of staff shortages and sickness, which runs at 18.5 days a year per officer: the lack of personal knowledge of the prisoners. "I remember once a colleague said to me one Saturday, 'Have you noticed Williams? Every weekend he's all tidy, his shoes are polished up and he's in his best gear. What's that all about?' It turned out every weekend he was waiting for a visit from his parents that never came. They used to visit but then they stopped. I looked into it and it turned out his parents had moved but the visiting orders were still being sent to the old address. We got them sent to the new address and they started visiting again. Things like that used to make the job worthwhile. The way we're going now we don't even have the time to realise we have got a fucking neo-Nazi thug in the same cell as an Asian lad."

Narey acknowledges the problems and says he will address them. He knows officers are angry, but says he will sack those who "swing the lead". He gives the impression that every suicide in a British jail cuts deep. There were 94 last year and reducing that number is his top priority. He also wants a public debate about the role of prisons. "A lot of people don't give a damn about what goes on inside prison walls, and only get engaged when they think we're running holiday camps. Well, I'd rather be criticised for giving them all a TV, for treating them well, than for being too harsh."

Both Pascoe and Narey say they would like young offenders' institutions to be places where their own teenage sons would be treated fairly, should they get into trouble. One day Huntercombe young offenders' institution, high in the Chilterns near Reading, will be the sort of place they have in mind. At this juvenile-only establishment, governor Paul Manwaring has established a "term" system. Prisoners study employment skills - painting and decorating, bricklaying, car mechanics - for 10 weeks, then have a "break week" in which they take art, drama or music classes, culminating in a prize day and performances.

Huntercombe is far from utopian, but in a resettlement class on the Mountbatten wing the fruits of the regime are apparent. Here, 10 kids within three months of release are taking a class aimed at preparing them for life on the outside. In contrast to many of the lads in the classrooms and on the wings both here and at Feltham, they are communicative and confident; they can see light at the end of the tunnel. Statistics say eight of them will be back, but for the moment they are looking forward, mainly to a McDonald's and to seeing their friends. The class volunteer and prison officer leave the room and I ask them if there is anything they want to say about prison. "Can we really say anything and you'll put it in the paper?" asks Frank. I nod. He grins and says: "Tell all our parents, 'Hello from Huntercombe!' "