Short Sharp Shock: youth detention centres in the 1980s

In 1979 the new Tory government led by by Margaret Thatcher and Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, abolished borstals for young offenders and introduced a new system of ‘youth detention centres’ employing harsh, quasi-military discipline. They proudly claimed in their Party Manifesto that they were going to “experiment with a tougher regime as a short, sharp shock for young criminals”.

Using a series of fascinating images taken inside one such institution in the mid 1980s by radical photographer Carlos Guarita and the memoirs of an inmate, this photo-essay tells the story of what it was like to be incarcerated in a ‘youth detention centre’ and to be subject to ‘short, sharp, shock’.