THERE is nothing remotely festive about the reception area at HMYOI, Deerbolt. There is an elderly bike, as if for a slow getaway, a green button above a sign saying "Do not press this bell" and, of course, a Mission Statement.

Everyone has a Mission Statement; there's probably a chap in The Times personal columns offering to do them for £75 plus VAT. What this one amounts to is that while Deerbolt may not exactly be user-friendly, it will attempt to be user constructive, and user-humane.

Deerbolt is near Barnard Castle, on the south bank of the Tees. HMYOI means Her Majesty's Young Offenders' Institution, formerly Borstal, though the staff call it a prison and the young offenders call it jail, or worse.

"Mind," says one of the lads, "there's an officer on F wing who even says thanks when she's banging you up for the night."

Down a long corridor, through two or three more locked doors, across an open area surrounded by 30ft high security fencing topped with razor wire stands the chapel, dedicated to St John the Evangelist.

A lady is asked if she's there for the haircuts or the carol singing, an escorting officer cracks the joke about the colleague with the radio earpiece made from pigskin. (You know, the one with crackling in his ear.)

Thursday night's service is further proof that things have changed. Not only is The Northern Echo there - Christmas: the inside story - but the municipal chain gang, the mayor and her little retinue.

The modern chapel is ecumenical, though with icons and stations of the cross, could easily be Catholic. There is a Christmas tree but no windows, no bars, and for the first time, inmates are allowed to sit among visitors - "a real joy to the chaplaincy team," says the Rev Stan Bindoff, Deerbolt's full-time chaplain.

"A much nicer jail than Dover, where I was last year," says Dave Bignall. "We have our own tellies here."

Stan leads the service, offering everyone Good Evening.

"All right?" reply the lads, almost identically dressed in jeans and sweatshirt and, slightly disconcertingly, bearing a marked resemblance to the column's close-cropped elder son.

The sweatshirts carry no motif and no message: no been there, done that, half way through the sentence.

Stan tells his congregation that people often ask if he's a Catholic or a Christian - "I'm Church of England, so then they say he's neither Catholic nor Christian."

Whether or not the joke is fully appreciated, they laugh in the right places and remain generally respectful, though there is occasional ribaldry, a few unwanted asides and, once or twice, a word from a discipline officer (as apparently they are called) that they should remember where they are.

As if, at Christmas of all bitter-sweet times, they could possibly forget.

The theme reflects the ways of the world, not just the pitfalls of HMYOI, Deerbolt. There's a prayer for peace and justice, a confession that many are trampled upon, an address by Sister Ann Donockley, a former part-time Deerbolt worker who is now a chaplain to Newcastle's universities.

"It's my job to bore you for the next 20 minutes," she says, though by talking up, not down - there is a reference to Mahatma Gandhi's view that Christ is fine, it's the Christians who are the problem - she is attentively received.

Ably accompanied by a prisoner called Simon Merrington on keyboard, we sing half a dozen favourite carols including some revised words to Once in Royal David's City:

Mary's mum and dad went wild

When they heard their daughter had a child.

The most memorable bit, however, and infinitely the most courageous, is a presentation by Michael Curley, Dave Bignall and Michael Morrissey, in respectively for robbery, assault occasioning actual bodily harm ("I put a geezer in hospital") and police assault and aggravated taking without consent.

What is widely consented, however, is that the common denominator was drugs.

The performance includes findings of an opinion poll that 49 per cent of Britons still regard Christmas as a religious festival but that four per cent "hate" it, plus the revelation that while most of our dogs and cats can expect a stocking "overflowing with goodies", it costs just £25 to lay on a soup run for 60.

"They'll be calling me Jesus back on the wing, but they call me Cockney anyway, so it's not much different," says Dave.

All three are affable, upbeat - "I like it here," says Michael Morrissey - not so much butter wouldn't melt in the mouth as knowing which side the toast always falls.

Michael Curley says he knows of a feller who tried to hang himself a few days ago; Graham Morgan - the part-time Methodist chaplain who also looks after two churches in north Darlington - says that Christmas is still hard when there's no place to hide in HMYOI.

"We go round with a Christmas card for everyone. Some cells are wall-to-wall cards already, others haven't one. You can see them filling up because someone has remembered."

From other inmates, he concedes, the Christmas message is likely to have two words "and the second one is off".

More than anything, they miss their freedom. "My job is to be in the midst of them as a sign of hope and love," says Graham.

"I don't think prison chaplaincy is about making Christians," says Stan Bindoff, "it's about trying to be a Christian."

The service lasts an hour, after which there are abundant mince pies - "What you do not do is sell them," jokes the chaplain - and the lads are escorted back to their cells, to the barber, and to clipped wings.

As they leave, the music's more upbeat, the coffee free-flowing. "Typical, as soon as we go the party starts," says a lad with a Scouse accent the width of the Mersey estuary.

On Christmas day there'll be turkey and tinsel, competitions and camaraderie, but for most of the lads at HMYOI Deerbolt, the party is over already.

Published: 22/12/01