PRISON ‘LOUNGE’ CAUSING A STIR
Young offenders get widescreen TV, DVD, sofas and a choice of 6 guitars
YOUNG inmates banged up in this jail can lay back on sofas while they watch widescreen TV in a lounge that looks like an IKEA showroom.
There is a DVD player, six guitars – electric and acoustic – and a trendy triangle-patterned wall.
The “association room” is at HMP Cookham Wood, home to around 190 male offenders aged 15 to 18.
Many are doing stir for grave offences involving violence and drugs but may feel more rewarded than punished in the cosy room.
The lounge is in a part of the jail reserved for the best behaved, housing up to 17 at a time in individual rooms along with this common space. A source said: “This is far from the prisons of old that you could get.
“The hope is that by treating inmates better, they will stay on the straight and narrow.”
HM Prison inspectors praised the association room as “bright and comfortable”.
It has three grey sofas, throw cushions, a light blue carpet, dark blue rug and light blue walls. Jail bosses appear to have taken inspiration from their counterparts in Scandinavia.
Norway’s Halden jail was dubbed the world’s most humane. Inmates there have told how its rooms are bathed in natural light and the complex is surrounded by greenery,
A Prison Service spokesman said: “Incentive schemes promote rehabilitation, cut crime and protect the public.”
Cookham Wood near Rochester, Kent, was infamous as home to Moors Murderer Myra Hindley when it operated as a women’s jail.
Serial killer Hindley and lover Ian Brady – who murdered five children aged 10 to 17 in the 1960s – died after decades in custody.
The jail was converted to a young male offenders prison in 2007.
If you treat lags better they’ll stay on straight and narrow PRISONS SOURCE ON JAIL ‘ASSOCIATION ROOM’