What happened
The Ministry of Justice’s restraint report for 2014/15 records a restraint at a secure training centre in which a child “lost or reduced consciousness”. The report was obtained under freedom of information by the children’s rights charity Article 39, and released in redacted form.
The reviewer’s notes on the case refer to staff being coached on “application of head hold and risks to YP surrounding the use of arm across the throat”.
The same report logs 65 restraints across six child prisons in the year in which a child’s breathing was compromised, or the child was seriously injured, or both. Those include 11 losses or reductions of consciousness and 19 breathing difficulties. In another incident in the same report, a child vomited during a “prolonged” restraint, and the notes record “no single person supervising the procedure” because that role changed between staff several times.
The outcome
The Ministry of Justice’s Behaviour Management and Restraint Governance Board reviewed the incidents. Its notes on this case treat the head hold, and the arm across the throat, as a training issue rather than an accountability finding.
In 20 of the 65 incidents the Board made no recommendation at all. The department did not publish the report. It reached the public only through Article 39’s freedom of information complaint.
No prosecution, inquest or regulatory decision on this restraint is recorded; the child survived, so no inquest could attach.
What went wrong
A hold that crosses the neck was available to staff, was used, and was then discussed as coaching. Nothing in the Board’s response asks why it was available in the first place.
The second failure is the response itself. A governance system that records a child losing consciousness and answers with a training note in one case, and with silence in 20 of 65, is not reviewing restraint. It is filing it.
The record also shows what supervision looked like in practice: a prolonged restraint in which the supervising role changed hands several times.
What it teaches
An arm across the throat is a strangulation risk. It is not a control technique, and it should not be in a curriculum at all. Any hold that crosses the neck should be prohibited outright.
Loss of consciousness is not an early warning. It means the airway was already compromised, and the response is an immediate check and a change of position, not an instruction to comply. A child who says they cannot breathe, or who vomits during a restraint, needs a medical check.
Questions for the room
- Staff were coached on the head hold and the risks of an arm across the throat. What should have happened instead?
- You are the supervisor and the child in front of you has gone limp. What changes in the next ten seconds, and who takes over?
- The Board reviewed 65 serious incidents and recommended nothing in 20. What would make a review system worth having?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. Both published accounts derive from the same Ministry of Justice report, so they count as one source. The Guardian’s report was read. Article 39’s own page did not load during research, so its account of the figures is carried from the Guardian.
The underlying document is a primary official record, but it is redacted and was never published by the department, so nothing here rests on the full text. This entry publishes anonymised: no child and no member of staff is named, and the centre is identified only by type. The source’s headline and web address name it; that is the citation.
Our restraint reduction training covers positional and airway risk, and the supervision that has to sit over any hold.
Sources
Reviewed 20 October 2026.