ABSTRACT
In a television documentary about Feltham, the largest Young Offender Institution in England, a relative of a young person who had tragically hanged himself whilst on remand in the prison made a most telling comment in a very simple and moving way: ‘Nobody thought about him.’ This wasn’t just a comment about busy staff who were under so much pressure because of the numbers of young people they had to ‘process’, although it was clear from the documentary that this was a feature of the institution’s functioning. It was an insight into a system in which the demands on staff were not being managed in a way that recognised their need for time and space to think about an individual young person and through thinking to embark on a course of action that literally might have saved his life. Thinking ‘hurts’ because it means having to engage with the painful raw material that is generated in secure units when young people and adults come together. These are intense environments where, however strong the resistance and denial may be, there is no real escape from the conflict and pain that inevitably surface. This chapter is about that raw material and it suggests ways in which it might be thought about, which staff who work in secure units will, I hope, find useful.
