The coroner in the recent inquest of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood, the youngest person to die in custody, called for an urgent review into the use of restraint on children held in secure training centres.
The inquest heard Adam had been restrained by four staff for not going to his room and later hung himself at Hassockfield secure training centre in 2004. Other children were also regularly restrained for "non-compliance" - a practice that Rickwood's solicitor and campaigners argued was unlawful, although the coroner said staff had acted appropriately.
The government's swift and shocking response to the coroner's call for a restraint review has been to propose legislation to extend staff powers of restraint in the centres, raising the ire of campaigners.
The move is a sign that knee-jerk legislation, that old favourite of the Home Office under Blair, unfortunately shows no sign of leaving along with the PM as he slowly edges out of Downing Street. The old Home Office adage of "if in doubt, legislate" has rung true yet again with the newly anointed Ministry of Justice's first faux pas in youth justice.
Powers to restrain kids for non-compliance are already in existence in the prison service-run young offender institutions and other non-secure settings such as schools. The Ministry of Justice said it wanted to bring secure training centres (a government euphemism for privately-run child jails) "in line" with other establishments. Under current rules, the centres can only restrain kids if they are at risk of harm to themselves or others, or likely to escape or damage property.
But restraint for "non-compliance" for acts of disobedience such as refusing to go to bed has been "going on for years" in contravention of secure training centre rules, according to Baroness Vivian Stern, a leading penal reformer.
Now it will become lawful, if the Ministry of Justice's statutory instrument comes to pass.
According to critics, the measure smacks of a "get-out-of-jail free" card for the Ministry, retrospectively exonerating the government, the Youth Justice Board and all staff in secure training centres who have ever unlawfully restrained children for reasons of "good order and discipline."
It will only fuel the growing anger over restraint among children's rights groups and penal reformers, and no doubt all those children in the privately-run prisons won't feel able to commmit any act of the slightest disobedience for fear of being restrained.
Parliamentarians have to the end of next month to find enough opposition to quash the proposed legislation. A group of MPs have already backed an Early Day Motion asking for the government to withdraw it. Watch the war on restraint gather pace.