Nine pain-inducing restraints, all nine judged inappropriate

Inspectors found pain-inducing techniques used on children nine times in a year, every one judged inappropriate, and a girl stripped by an all-male team twice.

What happened

HM Inspectorate of Prisons inspected HMYOI Wetherby, in Yorkshire, between 20 November and 7 December 2023. Its report was published on 5 March 2024.

Wetherby holds boys and girls, including children assessed as carrying the same risk as a Category A adult prisoner, and some extremely vulnerable girls. It had the highest rate of self-harm of any prison in the country, with officers often intervening several times at night to stop girls ligaturing.

Inspectors found that all-male teams of officers had restrained a girl and removed her clothing to prevent her self-harming, not once but twice, without a female officer present.

The outcome

HM Chief Inspector of Prisons called publicly for girls to be moved out of the prison. No prosecution is recorded.

Charlie Taylor, the Chief Inspector, said his team was “deeply shocked”. The officers no doubt acted to prevent serious harm, he said, but “the presence of multiple men pinning her down and removing her clothes will have caused further trauma”. He said the prison had no excuse for not ensuring female officers were in attendance, because the girl’s behaviour was predictable.

The Ministry of Justice said the girls had exceptionally complex needs, and that restraint is used on children only in rare circumstances where there is no alternative to prevent serious harm.

What went wrong

Twenty-four children had been strip-searched in twelve months, twelve of them under restraint. Leaders had recorded the decision to carry out a strip-search, but none had recorded the authority to use restraint.

Pain-inducing techniques had been applied nine times in twelve months, and on every occasion the Independent Review of Restraint Panel had deemed them inappropriate. Leaders were not consistently reviewing footage of use of force, and inspectors found a restraint that injured a child which had not been referred to senior leaders.

What it teaches

A panel that reviews every use of force and finds nine out of nine inappropriate is describing routine practice, not exceptions. When the reviewer never upholds a technique, the technique has become the default.

Oversight that does not reach the footage is a signature on a form. Authority recorded for the search but not for the restraint is the same failure from the other side: the paperwork covers what looks like a procedure and misses what involves hands.

Mixed-sex staffing during the restraint of a child is a safeguarding requirement, not a courtesy. The Chief Inspector’s point was predictability: this was a planning failure, not bad luck.

Questions for the room

Nine pain-inducing restraints, nine found inappropriate. What does that pattern say about the training that produced it?
You need to intervene with a girl using a ligature and no female colleague is on the unit. What do you do, and who do you call first?
Strip-searches were authorised on paper; the restraint was not. Who should have been recording that second decision?

Evidence and limits

Confidence: confirmed. The inspectorate’s press notice and an independent national newspaper report were both read and agree on the figures. The notice’s notes to editors give the report’s publication date as 5 March 2023, while the notice itself and the newspaper give 5 March 2024; this page follows the record and says 2024.

There are no proceedings attached. The findings are against the establishment, not any individual. No member of staff and no child is named.

Our restraint reduction training covers pain-inducing techniques, and the review that has to sit behind every use of them.

Sources

Reviewed 20 October 2026.

Nine pain-inducing restraints, and a panel that rejected all nine