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[10 January 2010] - The information commissioner has said that a secret prison service punishment manual used in privately run child jails should be made public after a three-year freedom of information battle. The 114-page Physical Control in Care training manual details restraint techniques authorised for use on children in secure training centres. They include detailed descriptions of "distraction" techniques, which deliberately inflict pain and were found by the court of appeal to have been routinely unlawfully used in secure training centres. The information commissioner's Youth Justice Board was told to publish secret parts of the manual after a complaint from the Children's Rights Alliance for England in 2007 which was endorsed by parliament's human rights committee. MPs and peers said they were alarmed when they saw the headings of some of the redacted sections of the manual covered issues including "hair grab", "strangle on the ground", "strangle against the wall", "strangle on the ground", "kicks standing" and "kicks on the floor". The MPs and peers also concluded in their report that it was impossible to tell whether physical restraint techniques complied with human rights when they remained secret. The Youth Justice Board (YHB) refused to publish pages 60 to 114 of the manual, which detail the restraint techniques, and argued that publication could undermine security in child prisons by allowing the children to learn how they work and develop ways to counteract them. But in an unusual ruling the information commissioner has now said that the security considerations for keeping it secret were outweighed by the public interest in disclosure. The commissioner said he had taken into account the serious concerns surrounding the use of restraint on children in custody. This included the 2004 deaths of two young teenage boys in restraint-related incidents in secure training centres, the appeal court ruling and the "significant body of opinion ... who argue against the use of distraction techniques on moral and ethical grounds". The information commission has told the Youth Justice Board that it has until Thursday to disclose the secret parts of the manual or appeal its decision. A YJB spokeswoman said due consideration was being given to the commissioner's decision: "We will notify him of our position in due course." Katy Swain, the legal director of the Children's Rights Alliance, which brought the case, expressed delight at the ruling: "A year after the government published its plans to reform the use of restraint in custody, inspection reports continue to reveal shocking conditions in many child prisons. However, information remains patchy and there is a lack of strong leadership from the government to ensure that institutions are held to account for abusive practices." The ruling comes as the Howard League for Penal Reform has formally complained to Ofsted that its latest inspection report on Medway secure training is "blithely uncritical" of the use of physical violence on children and is "so superficial as to be almost meaningless". The report on the Kent child jail says that the use of restraint by individual staff is carefully monitored to ensure it remains appropriate but fails to detail the number of times that it has been used.
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