Firm that ran criticised UK youth jail awarded contract for asylum centre

theguardian.com:

A private prison firm that was criticised over dangerous conditions at a youth jail is now providing security at an asylum seekers’ centre where Border Force staff have warned that overcrowding and assaults are creating a pressure cooker situation.

Management & Training Corporation (MTC) was repeatedly criticised by the regulator Ofsted over conditions at the Rainsbrook secure training centre, near Rugby, where children at young as 15 were locked up for more than 23 hours a day with “no justifiable rationale” during the coronavirus pandemic.

All children were removed from Rainsbrook in July 2021, after subsequent inspections documented physical assaults, children carrying weapons and warnings from staff that someone was likely to die at the centre. Some of the children were sent to adult prisons instead.

Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that MTC, owned by a US private prisons company of the same name, made a profit of £11m in 2020, the year before the £50m Rainsbrook contract was terminated by mutual consent with the Ministry of Justice.

In 2021, the Home Office awarded the company a new contract to run “migrant quarantine hotels” in the Midlands, using staff who had previously worked at Rainsbrook.

Accounts filed at Companies House reveal that this contract was later amended to allow MTC to take charge of security at an asylum seekers’ facility for people who have crossed the Channel on small boats.

The Home Office does not appear to have published the contract. But about 50 staff are understood to have been moved to work at Manston under a rolling contract with MTC that has no fixed end date and a five-week notice period.

Last week, the POA, the trade union for Border Force, raised concerns that the Manston centre was