Conditions ar Deerbolt were tough for the first inmates, who had to build their own accommodation. Nigel Burton reports.

DEERBOLT borstal opened on a sunny day in July 1973, with the official ceremony performed by Home Office minister Lord Colville.

The first 15 inmates arrived from a Manchester allocation centre. Their first task was to help finish rebuilding the former Army camp on the outskirts of Barnard Castle, County Durham - and there was plenty of work to be done.

Rodney Nash, Deerbolt's first governor, said it would take ten years to finish the centre, which would become home to 420 youths aged between 17 and 21.

Those first 15 lads slept in old Army billets until they finished the first accommodation centre.

Home Office officials coined the term "DIY borstal", adding that making the boys build their own prison would "give them practical training as well as saving costs".

Mr Nash said: "The saving in cost made by the boys doing the work themselves is, of course, enormous, but the project also gives them constructive work which is worthwhile doing."

Playing down local fears about "misfits" taking over the old Army buildings, he said: "The boys selected for Deerbolt will not be thought of as a particularly serious hazard if they escape and they will not be thought likely to try."

His words would come back to haunt successive governors who had to deal with regular breakouts.

On the opening day, however, Mr Nash was full of hope, going so far as to describe the inmates held behind the high perimeter fence as "reasonable sorts".

Those early inmates were soon put to work building seven houses, each capable of holding 60 people. The old Army gym was refitted with modern equipment, and a football pitch marked out.

To help them cope with the demands, Deerbolt ran 16-week training courses in bricklaying, concrete-mixing, scaffolding, decorating and interior fitting.

The day began at 7am and work did not finish until 5pm. Most earned 50p per week. Overtime was paid at 1Âp per hour.

In those early months, evenings were filled with educational classes and TV was rationed to a maximum one hour per day. Attending a Sunday church service was compulsory.

Deerbolt was urgently needed. In 1973, about 5,000 young boys were undergoing "borstal training" at correctional facilities throughout the country. Then, as now, the prison service struggled to cope.

Accommodation at borstals was so over-stretched that 150 youths were languishing in London's Wormwood Scrubs prison.

Deerbolt set new standards. After one of the first inmates left, he said: "It's like a holiday camp compared to the detention centre I was in. There the system was so strict I just rebelled against it. But since I came to Deerbolt I have thought a lot."

In the first 12 months, ten inmates escaped from Deerbolt.

All of them were recovered and brought back. Punishments included segregation, loss of earnings and longer sentences.

But in 1978 Deerbolt hit the national headlines when five teenagers broke out by using a drainage grille to smash their way through the fence.

The escape was hours after a youth had been recaptured after four hours on the run, and another was caught trying to breach the perimeter.

A few months earlier, five boys disappeared for more than a week after a rugby match in Northallerton, North Yorkshire.

Although the youths were re-captured, Governor Michael Langdon summed up the problems that continue to dog management to this day.

He said: "We are caught between two stools. We try a certain amount of trust. When lads come here... if they respond they go into the dorms and then may be allowed to work outside. It is a risk running it like this, but otherwise it would be like Colditz."

Deerbolt today is about as far removed from Colditz as it is possible to get. Inmates would no more consider building their own accommodation than they would polishing the governor's shoes.

The youths who flooded their cells last night were removed to cells without a sink. The worst offenders were moved to accommodation in a different institution.

Perhaps they should have been handed a dustpan and brush instead.