Bring back Borstals! Top cop slams parents’ lack of discipline

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:22Do we need to bring back borstools? And should parents be sent to jail for their children's criminal behavior? We speak to former top cop Peter Blexley, who says there are two things missing when it comes to raising children in the UK today. Discipline and deterrent. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominy.

1:54Tim, we're going to discuss whether we should bring back Borstels. You obviously went to one because compared to me, you were state educated. I went to a state school. I meant to be this person that because I was privately educated, I consider anyone who wasn't to have attended a borstal. It was a bit like a borstal in the sense that I was always running away. Were you? Yes. You weren't a happy student. Not until your Cambridge days. And we are joined by former Met Police detective Peter Blexley to discuss whether, first of all, we should bring back borstals. and secondly, whether parents are taking enough responsibility for their children's bad and indeed criminal behaviour.

2:29Well, I sent a few people to Borstal over the years. And remarkably, a couple of months ago, I was making a joke on social media about how I was useless at everything, so I felt I qualified to be a minister. Not of the clergy, but of the government, obviously. And a guy contacted me and he said, Peter, you did a very good job in sending me to Borstal. where he did three and a half years. And so then we had a little bit of a chat, as you can imagine, away from the public eye, and he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Really? But is that everybody's experience? No. And is that just because it scared him straight or did it sort of teach him things?

3:10I think the length of time that he was away from home. That's why I'm such a big fan of lengthy jail terms. Right. If you've spent 10, 12, 14 Christmas days away from your family, not only does it eventually sink into you about the magnitude of the harm that you caused, the damage that you created, but it also makes you really re-evaluate what is important and what you're missing out on and what you then don't want to miss out on when you leave those prison gates. It could also help some people to get sober. But I mean, when... Well, it can help some people to become drug addicts. True. Unfortunately, it can work both ways.

3:49But when you did send people, I mean, my question, Did it teach them things? Did or does borstal or prison have some benefits in terms of teaching discipline? To young people in particular? Yes, to young people in particular. Long term, yes. Long term jail terms actually work. And all the stats bear this out. People who have served long jail terms usually come out determined not to go back. Yeah, but then do we want to be sending away teenagers for years on end? What's your definition of a Borstal versus what we have now, which is a youth offender institute? Well, I was speaking to somebody only last week who works in a youth offenders institute and the tales of violence, of the horrors, and I mean the people that are locked up, described to me as absolute horrors, regarded as being beyond redemption and in their teenage years.

4:45So these are minors, right? They're under 18s who have been... Children, as far as the system's concerned. They're called children within the system. And found guilty of very, very serious crimes? Serious crimes. And they are wreaking havoc behind these doors. And it's absolutely... Some was described to me as being just off the Richter scale and just beyond any kind of redemption. And has that a change from the older Borsal system? Was the Borsal system more disciplined and orderly? Well, largely based upon military discipline, of course, the bolstiles, whereas I think young offender institutes now are more based on a model of the prison service in recent decades.

5:27Either way, we've got rising violence in society. We've got increasingly horrendous crimes being committed by people, including very young people. and there are people that really need discipline. It's the D word. It's what I call the D word. And it's not a dirty word, certainly not in my household. It's so important. I lacked discipline as a child. I got up to teenage shenanigans at the weekends with my mates, none of which I'm remotely proud of. But when I then joined the police cadets, which was a wholly different situation, where the physical training instructors were former Royal Marines, and if they caught you leaning on the wall, they'd say, right, down for 10, Blexley, 10 press-ups.

6:19The option wasn't, or what? Yes. It just didn't exist. You got down and you did those press-ups. But why have we witnessed a sort of erosion in discipline in young people over the course of recent decades? David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, is suggesting that parents need to take more responsibility. So I'll ask you as a dad of three grown-up sons, Peter Blexley, when you were in the force, I imagine you were quite formidable at the dinner table if somebody came back from school with some bad marks. Were you the bad cop parent or was your wife? Or how did you make it work at home? Both my wife and I value and put in place boundaries.

6:58I call it discipline. Sarah prefers to call it boundaries. But they were in place and they were unbreachable. so there wasn't any coming home from school with lousy results. It just simply didn't happen. And the fact that there was discipline instilled everywhere in every aspect of their lives was perfectly offset, shall we say, or supported by love, unbelievable love. I still kiss my kids before they go to bed now. We've only got one left at home. He'll soon be on his way. But they still get kissed and get told they're loved. every day, whether it's on the phone, whether it's in person. So they knew that the boundaries made them feel comfortable.

7:43And when I talk about boundaries, it starts when they're tiny. Before they can talk, they understand the word no. Don't pull off grandma or granddad's glasses. It's no. And anybody who doesn't want to teach their children the meaning of the word no are doing themselves, their children and society a huge disservice. But crucially, there were two of you, husband and wife. Now, is there a correlation between rising youth offending and single parenthood? I don't have the stats to hand. I don't. In your experience. It would probably be ill-advised of me, and I'd probably be doing a lot of single parents a huge disservice.

8:26Some single parents do a wonderful, magnificent job. And I'm sure if you're working full time, you're then getting the kids home from school and you've got to do make them their tea and get them doing their homework and all of that. Yes, it must be challenging. But it's easier, in my opinion, if you've got boundaries, if you're instilling that discipline. And it truly starts from before they can speak. And it doesn't have to be draconian. It doesn't have to be bullying. but it's boundaries and kids love it. They feel secure, they feel loved, they feel safe. Look at the word no, when the kid toddles towards the oven.

9:08It's no, isn't it? No. But then something's happened with love because you could have a situation where almost children are loved too much and they're told the word yes too often because parents are worried about hurting their feelings and we know there has been this rise in children knowing their own rights, which I don't think we knew as clearly in the 1980s. we were just we just did what we were told. I was unaware I had any rights. No I mean do we even have any rights now too that's the question and then you get the other end of the spectrum which are parents that are showing no love or concern for what their children are doing at all are letting them run riot taking no interest whatsoever.

9:45I mean when you dealt with young offenders which category would they largely fall under because I could be just making assumptions here Peter, but I'd imagine, you know, criminal children probably come from criminal families. Father's not interested. Mother might have an addiction. But I'm just probably painting very middle class ideas onto different socioeconomic pictures, right? Yeah, my uniform policing phase were a long time ago. But firstly, you've absolutely hit the nail on the head with this, I know my rights culture. Well, if you know your rights, then you blooming well should be aware of your responsibilities.

10:22And there is a responsibility upon you to be polite, to not steal things, to not go and break into somebody's home. And the list goes on and on and on, of course. And this is so much of the problem. I know my rights. Well, I'd rather you were familiar with your responsibilities and then you wouldn't have to spout such drivel. But back to policing. Yeah, a mixture of things. Sometimes you'd scoop up kids who had made a bad decision and done something stupid. And I'd know that, they'd know that. Generally speaking, they were mortified. Their parents were mortified. And you knew that was going to be that kid's one and only experience in a police station.

11:04And you think they're going to be fine. They've seen the error of their ways. Others that come from criminal backgrounds, criminal families, they smash up that stolen car. They're 15, 16 years old. They cause carnage. You drag them out of that car and take them down to the police station. It's largely after there's been a chase, for example. And I would just know that I'm going to see that kid. No matter what punishments they get, I'm going to see him again. And I'm going to see him again. And eventually the criminal justice system will catch up with the level of their offending. And then I won't see him for a fair few years.

11:39But then that does kind of put a question mark over so-called expansion of parenting orders. So Mr Lammy is considering plans to expand and strengthen the orders which can punish parents if they fail to ensure that their children attend school or rehabilitation schemes. And this does come on the back of the South Park killing because in that case, Sir Adrian Fulford carried out the inquiry and heavily criticised, we'll call him AR, AR's parents for not stepping in. They sort of wanted it both ways. They wanted to say on one hand, we can't control this lad, but on the other resisted getting the authorities to step in to help because they didn't want him to end up in care or prison.

12:19Well, they actually challenged his exclusion from school after he attacked a fellow pupil with a hockey stick. So it wasn't just that they were hands off. The father knew he was taking delivery of weapons. So that was an extreme case. And it comes off the back of a US case, which I think is very interesting. There was a school shooting in Michigan at Oxford High School in 2021. And subsequently, not just the shooter was prosecuted, but also his parents were prosecuted because they had failed to handle his mental health problems and also they had actually purchased the gun that he had used. So I think parenting orders could be effective if the parents actually care but in a great many of the cases the parents are nowhere to be found.

12:59So what difference would this make? First of all I have to tackle the fact that you've called Axel Rudabakana AR. Peter, I say AR because the parents of two of the girls who have murdered say, can we never mention this guy's name again? Ruda Kibana. That's why I said AR, because two parents have written to the media and said, stop using his name. We don't want our girls to be associated with this guy. I can't understand their hurt and their sense of loss. Of course I can't. But the name Ruda Bacana needs to be seared into the very wide public consciousness. People need to know that name. They need to be able to identify that name with the horrors that he committed, with the failings that led to it, so that we hopefully can all move together as a society, as an establishment, to ensure that those abominable things do not happen again.

13:52That would be my standpoint. Sure. But on the issue of would parenting orders help when the parents don't care what the children are up to? I'm not a fan of orders. OK, whatever they be. And we've got a raft of them these days that the police can use. Community orders. Now we're talking of parenting orders, which have been in place for a long time, but have shrunk hugely from 1 ,000 to 30 a year or something. Orders, for me, signifies a failure by the system to grip the situation. OK, it's very easy. I'll give you an example. Somebody gets arrested, a persistent shoplifter. So they give them an order not to go to a particular location.

14:33Well, that's utter drivel. What you really need to do is grip the offending, gather all the evidence, get so much evidence that the CPS are then actually boxed into a corner whereby they can only authorise the charging of that person. And then that person goes in front of a court and then hopefully they are suitably punished. Orders are used as a sticking plaster, as a lazy way out, but so that people don't grip it and deal with it properly. Kent Police, just a couple of years ago, published figures on what people are arrested for. And nearly 50 % of Kent Police's arrests were for breach of orders because they don't work so often.

15:19They're a shortcut. They're lazy. They signify a fundamental lack of gripping a situation, doing the hard work, gathering the evidence, getting the statements, finding the witnesses, all those kind of things. and then presenting a package of evidence to a court. It's lazy. They're lazy. But what Lamy wants to do is increase the penalty for the parents if the child breaks the order. Now, I take your point that orders themselves might not work, but how about that idea of saying you will be the person who is punished if your child misbehaves? I quite like that because it compels them then to take an interest in what their child is doing.

15:58What a sad indictment that we have to compel people to take an interest in what their kids are doing. But we do. I want culpable liability punishable by imprisonment where the evidence is clear and unequivocal. So rather than mucking about just send the kid to some sort of detention. And the parents. Right. And the parents. If their parenting has been so manifestly neglectful, irresponsible, that it can be said to have contributed to the offending, then yeah, you go to prison as well. But any of Lamy's reforms won't start sending huge swathes of people to prison because there's no prison space.

16:38Lammy's Justice Department is sending out messages, and I know this for a fact, to judges, to magistrates, and it's filtering down to the police, don't arrest people, don't charge people if there's any other alternative, because there is not the prison capacity. Coming up next, Peter discusses flash mob crime and shoplifting.

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17:53Well, this is a really important point. So when we've seen this kind of flash mob criminality, for instance, when youths find out on social media that everyone's going to go down to JD Sports and just force the doors open and have a looting session. And that has happened in parts of London. It's happened in Clapham. It's happened elsewhere. I think part of that is that the young people, because of this whole rise in shoplifting, but decline in prosecution for shoplifting, this£200 limit, which the Prime Minister has repeatedly says he wants to scrap, but seemingly nothing really changes down on the retail floor, that they just feel that they can get away with wanton criminality.

18:33I mean, I would be really distressed to see my children, one of my children on a video trying to loot a sportswear shop. I mean, that would be like, I would really feel that that was a damning indictment of my parenting. But wouldn't you make sure they had the best lawyer so they didn't go to jail? I would ensure probably to represent them myself with my own legal training. But sorry, I mean, there for the grace of God go I, one can never say that their children wouldn't get up to something insanely stupid. Yes, I can. Sometimes children get dragged into stuff that they shouldn't get dragged into.

19:05My three adult children will never spend a day in a prison cell. Well, I'd like to say that about my own children, Peter. But I'm making the central point about, don't you think with what you've said about people running riot in actual Young Offenders Institute, plus what you're saying about the lack of the police's ability to bring charges because there isn't anywhere to house these kids, that the kids know this. They're not stupid. And they just think, well, I'll go on a looting spree in Sports Direct because I'll probably get away with it. Another D word. There's not sufficient deterrence. Yeah.

19:38But it comes back to a lack of discipline in the home, discipline in schools, woeful in so many schools, discipline and deterrence. We don't have the deterrence. They're doing that kind of chaos that they created in Clapham the other week. they realise that there's not going to be a patrolling police officer that you just happen to bump into as you run out of that store with your pair of trainers. Well, we've got retailers now saying the people who are policing the stores shouldn't stop shoplifters. Non-intervention policies. We've had a couple of supermarkets firing people who stopped. But to bring the conversation full circle, would a Borstal be a better deterrent than a Young Offenders Institute?

20:19I mean, what are we thinking? that we should bring back borstools because, as you say, they were run with military precision and actually succeeded on getting kids back on the straight and narrow? Well, we'll have to wait and see. It's very light on detail, as usual, with any of these government's policies, soundbites and other nonsense spewed out and light on detail. But again, it comes back to we have a fundamental lack of discipline in society, self-discipline and broader discipline. It is sadly lacking. You've only got to get on a train like I did half an hour ago. There's someone with their feet on the seats.

20:55There's litter on the floor of the train. You've just got to see it's everywhere. It plagues our nation, the mass fly tipping that we've got, the standards of behaviour and so on and so forth. We are lacking the D word, discipline. Is there a risk here that we conflate two different things? One is a general level of ill discipline. I agree with that. But in the case of AR, there's something very specific, which is the reluctance or inability to section people who are very clearly a threat to themselves and the rest of the community. Very possibly. But then is there such thing as so-called petty crime?

21:31It's not petty when your phone is nicked out of your hand or you're shoved to the floor. No, and let me say at this point that... Or antisocial behaviour, Tim, that literally ruins your commute to work. And proven offences by children in England and Wales have increased for two consecutive years, rising by 4 % in the year ending March 2024, with significant surges in sexual offences up by 47 % and violence against the person up by 5%. So this is not just hysteria. There's genuinely something happening. Also, if you're a young person who hasn't got good parents or, I don't know, is somehow socially deficient in various different ways and you think that you can go on a commuter train and put your feet up on the seat and listen to music without any headphones on, regardless of how greatly it inconveniences others, and throw your McDonald's out of the window.

22:19And actually, if there's a flash mob at your local JD Sports, you may as well just join in because nobody will care. it's not that much of a leap to then move to greater moments of criminality simply because you think you can yes and you've lost any self-respect you ever had yes i mean those formative years of of a message being sent out to young people that they can just do whatever they like without very many consequences is societally hugely damaging it actually puts more emphasis on parents it's the parents that then have to step up the parenting against societal norms to say no, this isn't normal.

22:54This isn't how you should be behaving. No, you shouldn't have your feet up on a train seat. I mean, it's basic stuff, but we do seem to have let those standards slide. There's also no concept of shame anymore. We've discouraged the idea of shame, but the children should be ashamed of their behaviour, but also parents should be ashamed that their child was caught doing this. Or like, haven't you seen somehow how young people behave and they're sort of back chatting to adults on a train or in the street, and you think you'd not dream of doing that back when we were growing up. I would have been clipped around the back of the ear, but I'm not sure that was a good thing.

23:29Peter? I think as soon as you use violence, you've lost the argument. No, I fundamentally agree. In fact, I would outlaw smacking as well, like they have done in Scotland, but that's a completely different debate. You can put in place boundaries and discipline without having to need to raise your hand to a child. That really is not necessary if you do it properly. I think we also need to remember that there are millions of brilliant parents out there raising their kids the right way to be polite. After you, madam. After you, sir. Can I help you with your bag? All of that kind of stuff. There are still many, many people out there trying to do it.

24:03But unfortunately, there's a growing swathe who clearly do not, who clearly think that they've raised their children and think that they're entitled and they can do what they want. and consequently that's why we're in this situation now. Peter Blexley, thank you very much indeed for joining us again on The Daily Tea. It's a pleasure, thank you for having me.

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