Monday, February 20, 2006
Hey there, its been a long time since I've updated my blog, and still all I am able to give is a partial update! Mainly, I wanted to post the writing below - its a response to an online discussion about the treatment of young people in prison. I have a particular interest in this at the moment as I regularly work in one young offenders institution in a voluntary capacity. I hope the thoughts in the article will at least provoke some thinking. Best wishes to you all!
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Wow, the reactive temperances of some people on this website never fails to shock me. Saddening that people can have such violent tendencies towards other human beings, especially when many of the opinions are so ill-informed.
So, maybe it is time to do a bit of a reality check. Because, you see, this thread seems to be turning into a race to see who can be toughest on what are, actually, some of the youngest and most vulnerable people in our society. (Of course, at this point, I await the "they're not human, let alone children, they're evil, let them die in hell" comment.)
Prisons, if anyone has ever stepped a foot in one will know, are not nice places. Regularly working in one young offenders' institution, I would challenge any single person on here who chooses to demonise the children in them - and yes, they are children - to have a walk around one of the wings of an evening, to speak to some of the prisoners and to see what these places are like themselves. Anyone who is deluded into thinking that a). prison is a joke, or b). that the people in them are evil people beyond redemption really aren't very aware of the realities of our system of criminal justice.
To give you an idea of what its like, you can hear kids shouting out of their cell windows, some bullying others, some shouting in desperation, others screaming. Then you can hear kids that can only talk violently, and others that don't seem to talk at all. And, just in case people are forgetting, these are children once again.
Lord Carlile gave the conservative estimate [in his report on his Inquiry into the usage of physical restrain, strip searching and segregation of children in prison] of 50% of young offenders having diagnosable mental health illnesses. I say conservative as I have seen official internal statistics stating that 65-80% of children - I use the word children again - have mental illnesses severe enough to require Sectioning under the Mental Health Act. (Anyone, by the way, that isn't aware, Sectioning under the MHA isn't a joke, or about people that feel a bit anxious now and then).
Yeah, there are murderers inside them - I've met and spoken to many. However, 50% of young people that are inside at any one point are on Remand - in other words, unconvicted of any crime. A further 50% of these children are then found to be not guilty at trial - so a total of 25% of children at any one time are inside without even ever having broken any law. Now, try to justify the use of force on these young people please. But what do these kids get when they get out? Not so much as a sorry from a society that has been so quick to brutalise them. But what do they come out with? New skills in criminality that they'd never have come across before, and the loss of any innocence they may have once had.
When a child is received into custody, they are immediately taken to the side by officers, assessed to see whether they are likely to commit suicide and are then strip searched (often with anal examinations taking place) before being placed on a wing where they often will not know anyone, awaiting their movement elsewhere in the system. These children can be as young as 14 or 15. At any one time, 10% of young people in prison are on open ACCT documents - this is those young people on suicide watch. Most children and teenagers - those young men with the most energy, and often the least stable people in our society - are then locked in their rooms (yeah, you're not allowed to call them cells) for 18-20 hours a day. Is it any surprise that some prisons employ one or two officers specifically to run around prisons with the equipment to cut people down who have tried to kill themselves by hanging?
But this isn't what is most shocking. Most shocking of all is that if you walk around some of the wings in a prison, you will doubtless note a distinct over-representation of young people who are black or minority ethnic, or that can barely string a sentence together. Anyone that is naive enough to think that they're all in there for a 'good reason' or that the criminal justice system is fair probably won't be able to stick by that sentiment very long.
And, ya know, what is most upsetting about these sorts of threads [discussion boards] is that people on here think that those inside prison deserve absolutely everything they get, and that all them inside are evil human beings. That is precisely the logic that is used to accommodate the practices of physical restraint, segregation and strip searches (insert here humiliation) in the first place. The irony, of course, is that many young people are inside for relatively minor offences, or lots of minor offences which should have raised flags much earlier on. And, increasingly after the Antisocial Behaviour Act was passed in 2003, young people are being put into prison for breaking civil 'ASBOs' and haven't even committed a 'crime'.
So prisons have become a place where we can hide our societal sins. Young offenders institutions, in particular, should serve as an indictment on our notion of 'justice' - the fact you can have kids of 11 locked up for theft, or even robbery, is truly astounding in my view. But personally, I find it more frightening that we then let them out, expecting them to be in some way 'fixed', all in the name of protecting our society. The irony being they all come out brutalised. Is it any surprise that so many of them then go on to be revolving door cases, so angry with a society that has treated them with such contempt, even in childhood?
More upsetting, however, is that people are so easy to lock them up and then justify the use of force - and even enough force to kill them - because, well, hey, they're evil. I just hope that those people who espouse the old dictum "if you can't do the time then don't do the crime" really understand what they mean by that. A sentence in prison doesn't just last for the length passed down by a court.
Sadly, it seems many people don't quite understand or even care about these facts. Either that or they are so disconnected from the world that they don't understand the brutality in their own views. I just hope one day that they will.
posted by Steven at Monday, February 20, 2006
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: 6:06 pm
