One in four children in prison have been in care
and one in five children in custody are disabled
children in prison can often spend up to 22 hours a day
in their cells.
People don't realize that in this country we have children in proper prisons
they're not pretend prisons, they're not
you know a childlike version of a prison
they are proper prisons
so you've got the children hungry
children not being able to have physical exercise
have the sunlight on their face.
Many children in prison have substance use problems
have learning difficulties
have either experienced or witnessed
physical and sexual abuse
prisons act like prisons and children suffer
greatly in prisons
because that's what prisons are meant to do
from 2006 to 2016
a hundred and ninety-seven child life sentences
were handed down
the average age
of the person at the time of sentencing
was 16 years old.
Jordan was actually considered
registered blind at the time so he wouldn't have been able to see
the victim or what was happening and his evidence was that he had come to the
scene afterwards, after the actual fatal blow had been delivered.
He was very confused as to what had happened and what was being used against him as well.
Because he hadn't taken part in the violence and he hadn't encouraged it
and he certainly had no idea who... well, what had happened to the victim
other than reaching the scene and hearing the voices of other people and them saying
basically we need an ambulance. When the verdict was delivered
and obviously they said murder
for three of them and obviously what comes with it with
a sentence is a life sentence
and I didn't know that we gave children life sentences back then
I had no idea about it that someone at the age of 15
could be given life for murder when the core and the trial had clearly proved that
they weren't the person that I'd murdered anyone.
When he was given his life sentence which was 12 years minimum.
Almost as long as they'd been alive
which I thought was just something that must have been so horrendous for him at
the time, because
12 years may not seem like a long time for us but for a 15 year old
it's basically all of his life.
But life sentences have also been handed down
to children as young as 13.
In 2018 there were only four child life
sentences of prisoners in countries outside of the UK in the European Union
I think most people don't realize that we give children life
life sentences and they don't realize that life is actually 99 years
so if you're convicted at 15
your freedom ever to do anything that a normal person would do has completely
gone for the rest of your life.
You may not spend the rest of your life in prison
but you'll be monitored and watched for the rest of your life and
there'll be certain things you can and can't do and that will go on and until
the day you die
and I didn't know about that I didn't know that we would
actually put a child in prison
for such a huge amount of time
and that there wouldn't actually be anything in prison
that would help them develop in any way.
Although the number of children in prison in the last decade have gone down.
Children who are inside still come from vulnerable and impoverished backgrounds.
Children in prison are also disproportionately from black and Asian
and minority ethnic backgrounds
was somewhere in the region of 40%
of children behind bars
from BAME backgrounds.
We all know
that sending a child to prison and the child being completely on their own
without people who loved them, know them, understand them, look out for them,
is... you know it's it's up there with the worst things that can happen to a child.
They just looked at him and
thought 'Oh he's six foot four and a half he can handle himself we'll put him on
this wing,
which they did, they never read any reports
to say um,
he got ADHD, it's conduct disorder and he didn't
know how to manage his emotions.
If a child is trapped in this tiny room.
They firstly they wouldn't have ended up in prison
unless they really need adult help
Yeah?
Children who end up
repeatedly offending,
and that's not the majority of children in prison,
there is a question about whether the numbers we have in prison
you know, we couldn't actually help children in community settings
but those that do need to be in secure settings, those are the children
that need the the most skilled, the best we as adults can give them.
This other youth worker come upstairs to me and said to me,
'has he ever self-harmed?' and I said 'Yes'.
'Have you seen his face?'
I said, he was that worried he got toenail
clippers and he was cutting his face
but he'd also got some marks on his arms
where he'd self-harmed before, when things got on top on him, he self-harmed.
34 children have died in prison since 1990 which is the year the UK signed up to
the UN Convention on rights the child that we would follow those international
children's human rights standards.
Widespread unlawful restraint has been revealed
shocking levels of neglect and mistreatment.
The system cannot reform itself.
You tell made a boy who couldn't hardly read and write,
had wrote a two and a half page A4 letter to me.
Plus ripped his bedding
and hung himself
and been there for about 10 minutes before somebody found him when
he should have been on an ACCT document and checked every 15 minutes.
Young people also have less life experiences on which to rely to help them to deal
with the problems associated with prison life,
or indeed to manage the suicidal impulse
when things are looking bleak and hopeless.
They didn't look after him.
I didn't expect him to mollycoddle him and give his breakfast on a
silver tray. I expected him the basics, the warmth, just to keep him safe and feed him.
I didn't expect them to look after him like I would have looked after him
but they didn't even do that.
They didn't do it right.
It's the children we want a public inquiry for but they'll not give it us.
Because they're children.
And people don't know what goes off in prisons,
what they do to children in prison.
How they're treated.
They should be treated humanely, not like scum of the earth
because some really don't deserve to be there.
Really, there's other things they could do for them,
a lot of other things.
My son died while in the state care
but nobody knows that because there's never been a public inquiry.
We need to think again about what we mean by child prison as a last resort
and work towards ending the sanction of imprisonment
for all children who break the law
we need to listen to children we need to support
and empower them we need to recognise their vulnerabilities
we need to ensure that the voice of the child is heard
and we need to find radical alternatives
to deal with troubled and troublesome children in our society.
Get more from the Open University
Check out the links on screen now