Borstal

A borstal was a type of youth detention centre in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. In India, it is known as a borstal school.

Borstals were run by HM Prison Service and were intended to reform seriously delinquent young people. The word is sometimes used loosely to apply to other kinds of youth institution or reformatory, such as Approved Schools and Detention Centres. The court sentence was officially called "borstal training". Borstals were originally for offenders under 21, but in the 1930s the maximum age was increased to 23. The Criminal Justice Act 1982 abolished the borstal system in the UK, introducing youth custody centres instead.

In India, borstal schools are used for the imprisonment of minors. As of 31 December 2014, there were 20 functioning borstal schools in India, with a combined total capacity of 2,108 inmates.

The Gladstone Committee (1895) first proposed the concept of the borstal, wishing to separate youths from older convicts in adult prisons. It was the task of Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise (1857–1935), a prison commissioner, to introduce the system, and the first such institution was established at Borstal Prison in a village called Borstal, near Rochester, Kent, England in 1902. The system was developed on a national basis and formalised in the Prevention of Crime Act 1908.

The regimen in these institutions was designed to be "educational rather than punitive", but it was highly regulated, with a focus on routine, discipline and authority during the early years. Borstal institutions were originally designed to offer education, regular work and discipline, though one commentator has claimed that "more often than not they were breeding grounds for bullies and psychopaths." Some uncorroborated anecdotal evidence exists of unofficial brutality, both by staff towards the inmates and between inmates – though possibly no more than is the case for the prison system as a whole. In the 1930s, the borstal system produced a re-offending rate of around 30%, as opposed to a modern (2014) youth re-offending rate of at least 75%.

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