Borstal boys

[Deiter]

What's a Borstal? We hear of them over here in the States, and I have been told they were started in England

[Emma]

It's an institution for young offenders. They can't be sent to prison as they're too young so the equivalent is borstal.

[tinkerbell54]

A borstal is a young offenders institution. There is an old British film called Scrubbers, set in a women's borstal, from which the following song comes : A borstal girl came home one day to find her love had gone astray she asked him why he went away her turned to her and he did say: "one day you could have been my wife if you had lead a decent life but you preferred a life of crime go back inside and do your time" So if you want a love that's true a life of crime is not for you so never let your footsteps take the road that leads you to a borstal gate.

[SRAYN1]

The Borstal is an English reformatory system designed for youths between 16 and 21, named after an old prison near Rochester, Kent. The system was introduced in 1902 but developed by Sir Alexander Paterson, who became a prison commissioner in 1922. Each institution consisted of houses containing about 50 young offenders, with a housemaster or housemistress and staff. Training is tough, based on a full day's hard work. There are vocational-training courses, with six hours a week of evening education either in the Borstal or in technical colleges. The period of trainings, governed by the progress of the inmate through a grade system, averages about 15 months.

[Paddy]

A Borstal takes its name from the village of Borstal which is indeed near Rochester in Kent - which was the site of the first of these kind prisons for young offenders. The Institution is not 'named after an old prison' - it is the same site that is still in operation today - standing between Borstal (village) and Rochester, and is opposite Cookham Wood Women's Prison - where Myra Hindley, the child murderer used to reside. The Institution has its own pig farm nearby where some of the inmates work. My father used to work in the Prison Service and worked in 'Rochester Borstal' as it was then known in the early eighties. Whilst the above textbook definition of a borstal may have been true in 1902, I would take it with a pinch of salt with regard to modern times. I know my father would have been deliriously happy if he only had 50 young offenders to take care of, for example! The term Borstal is no longer used - they have now been renamed Young Offenders' Institutions. PS films about English prisons are bull.