(Facts checked) In 2018 Prison Policy reported that on any
given day around 53,000 juveniles are locked up in the United States.
That’s about five times more prisoners than are doing time in the whole of Belgium at
any age, and actually a bigger number than the adult prison populations in the majority
of countries.
The U.S. locks up more young offenders than any other nation.
Most of these people will go to what in the U.S. are called detention centers, but some
might go to long-term secure facilities, others to adult prisons and jails and others to residential
treatment centers.
If you’ve taken an interest in prison TV shows or have been locked up yourself, you’ll
know that violence is common among young imprisoned offenders.
Prison guards have also been said to have crossed the line time and again.
Let’s now take a look at some of the worst places.
We just talked about the USA, and we’ll get around to this country, but it’s not
only there that young offenders will be in for a rough time.
Let’s look at the UK, a country that used to be home to young offenders institutions
known as Borstals.
If you’ve seen the utterly grim 1979 movie “Scum” you’d know that these places
were feared.
Back then the authorities took a hardline on offending kids, and Borstals were notorious
for fighting among offenders and also rampant bullying.
The rough treatment by the authorities soon became outdated, but we might ask what replaced
these places?
According to the Independent newspaper in 2017 what did replace them and what the UK
had then was a “staggering rise in violence.”
According to that report, violence, self-harm and drug use has gone through the roof.
It said in 11 months there were 26,000 inmate-on-inmate assaults and 6,844 assaults on staff in just
England and Wales.
That year a report by the HM Inspectorate of Prisons said some kids aged 12-18 were
in their cells 22-24 hours a day, sometimes just because of staff shortages.
40 percent of those kids said they felt unsafe and many were suffering from depression.
What everyone seems to agree on is that reform is needed and needed quickly.
But what about the worst place?
One notorious place is called Aylesbury young offender institution, but that is only for
people aged 18-21.
The BBC cited a report in 2019 which said some of those youngsters are “some of the
most disruptive and challenging young men in the prison system.”
It’s understaffed, violence is rife, illegal substances are everywhere and assaults on
guards are up.
The same has happened at a place called Parc Prison's juvenile unit and there everyone
is aged under 18.
The BBC reported that many offenders dare not leave their cells.
It also said that three out of every five young “lads” felt intimidated by staff
and a third of the offenders said they felt in danger each day.
Again, staff shortages and lack of funds were to blame.
In fact, you can read some British media that will tell you that youth prisons in the UK
are worse than adult prisons in terms of violence.
One young offender said this in an interview about how his days sometimes go, “So they
gonna come and smack you up, so you got to smack them down before they put you down.
You’re fighting to survive so you don’t get wiped out.
If you die, you die.
That’s how it goes.”
It’s perhaps a big indictment of youth prisons in the UK that one prison inspector said a
place called Brinsford young offender institution was the worst prison he had visited in the
UK, and he meant including adult prisons.
Reformers have asked that this dangerous and squalid center be shut down.
Apparently, the level of violence might not be as high here, but many inmates only get
45 minutes to an hour a day outside of their cells in a day.
Those cells have been called by some reformers unfit for human habitation.
This might be why there has been a very high number of inmates self-harming there.
In 2018, one critic said this about Youth Prisons in England and Wales in relation to
the spike in violence and self-harm.
“When numbers of children in prison were sky-rocketing, the same narratives were pushed
out about children being complex and troublesome.
The plain truth is that children respond to appalling living conditions and lack of sustained,
expert care.
It’s time for these institutions to be closed.
They cannot be saved.”
Over in Hong Kong and in one of its youth detention centers it’s another story.
Apparently there it’s the guards that mete out the worst violence with some young offenders
in interviews said the guards liked to play “Chicken wing” and “Chinese Kale.”
The first means being told to bow and then guards beating the back of a prisoner with
their elbows, and the second is getting the same beating but in the most sensitive region
of the body for a man.
One former inmate of the Lai Chi Rehabilitation Centre said guards would just beat them for
nothing.
He said it was sometimes worse than violence, too, with guards at times doing their best
to humiliate the prisoners.
This might mean being forced to eat human feces or drink urine, being told no toilet
breaks, or being rushed out of the shower after 20 seconds still covered in soap.
They wanted to break the kids’ spirit, said the former prisoner.
A Hong Kong newspaper wrote about this, saying, “Officers in juvenile prisons tend to use
tougher, more violent and humiliating measures to treat the prisoners.”
Because of this and because it seems kids cannot or dare not complain, in 2017 The United
Nations Committee report on the “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment” stated that this needs to be investigated.
It seems here the system itself is more to blame for the violence and depravity, not
kids fighting among themselves.
Now let’s have a look at the USA.
With so many youngsters behind bars in that country and with so many gangs, you’d think
the places where the young do their time are not so pleasant.
This is what someone said about a place called Walnut Grove.
“A picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.”
Those are strong words, and Mother Jones wrote a few years back that boys as young as 13
there run “a gauntlet of physical and sexual assaults, and psychological abuse including
long-term solitary confinement.”
A federal judge even called the place “a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.”
It’s been closed since 2016, but we thought we should give it a mention just because what
people said about it.
It seems it might have been the very worst place you could find yourself locked up as
a young offender.
Before it was closed it had the worst record of sexual abuse in the USA for a youth prison,
while guards were said to routinely beat kids, sell drugs, and occasionally spectate at inmate
“gladiator” fights they put on.
If you complained, you might find yourself either being beaten or doing a long stretch
in solitary.
Most kids weren’t even in for violent offenses, either.
To make it worse, after investigating Walnut Grove, the FBI found state officials had been
making illegal deals with the private contractors that built the place.
The Marshall Project wrote that in the U.S. there are 80 such youth prisons, and said
there is one thing you need to know about them and that is “They’re harsh, dangerous
and isolated.”
In that case it might be hard to pick out the very worst, and we could say it would
be hard to beat Walnut Grove in terms of terror.
Still, we found numerous reports in recent years that said New York’s Rikers Island
is one place where young offenders have faced cruelty.
Investigations talked about “abuse of adolescents and the mentally ill”, while a standout
case was the beating to death of an 18-year old inmate back in 2008.
Worst still, it’s said the two inmates that beat him to death were part of something called
“The Program.”
An investigation revealed that this was a “secret society run by correctional officers
at Rikers Island to extort and beat other inmates.”
In 2012 another investigation revealed violence was still used by guards with impunity.
Did things change?
Well, in 2018 the New York Times wrote that solitary confinement for anyone under the
age of 22 was banned, but a way around that was found when some teenagers were just moved
to another facility where they could still face isolation.
Its particularly bad because reports state that young prisoners are more likely to self-harm
or take their own lives while in solitary confinement.
The story of Kalief Browder, a young man that took his own life there in 2015, is now well-known.
Then there’s the Lincoln Hills youth facility in Irma, Wisconsin, one of the biggest youth
prisons in the USA.
Several investigations have taken place after what the media called “allegations of abuse,
neglect and excessive use of force.”
One investigation said pepper spray was used regularly on youth prisoners and so were isolation
tactics.
We read one report that this place might be closing, but it seems it’s still there.
We should say that guards have described many youth detention centers as chaos and in many
youth facilities such as Lincoln Hills, they have been seriously injured.
One guard said in a TV interview in 2019 that every second of the job you are in danger.
He talked about 16 hour shifts back to back, with guards under constant and immense stress.
He said that Lincoln Hills was underfunded and the young inmates that end up there were
the “worst of the worst” and seen as cases that couldn’t be helped.
While a judge ruled that young inmates were subjected to abuse and their civil rights
were taken away from them, this 20-year veteran of Lincoln Hills said he never saw such abuse.
He also said he knew incidents had happened, but added that they were isolated.
He might be right, but you only need to look at the recent scandals in such youth facilities
in Texas and Florida to realize some awful things go on.
Four staff members at Gainesville State School in Texas in 2017 were charged with sexual
abuse of young inmates, and in Florida where girls were detained a similar thing happened
the same year.
According to one researcher, youths in juvenile detention facilities are at more risk from
such predatory abuse than adults are in adult prisons.
That research tells us that while in adult prisons being green, new to the prison, presents
many dangers, as does gang violence, in youth prisons mistreatment by guards is much more
of a problem.
Some reports in the U.S. suggest that the facilities we have mentioned are not just
“bad apples” on an otherwise healthy tree.
You can look up any number of youth facilities and find allegations of pervasive abuse and
subsequent investigations.
You can also find guards talking about intense pressure, long work hours, the constant threat
of violence, understaffing and underfunding.
Perhaps what has been created is a perfect storm, a vicious cycle of violence that impacts
both inmates and guards.
What the USA is trying to figure out, or what must be figured out is how to stop this cycle
of violence.
Like in the UK, many campaigners have said because of almost constant violence and civil
rights abuses such facilities need to be closed down.
There needs to be an alternative.
We should say that all over the U.S. there have been campaigns against youth prisons,
with some reports stating that community treatment programs have been more effective.
There is some evidence that someone sent to a youth prison instead of an alternative community
program is more likely to commit another offense when released.
We found some programs in Ohio, Michigan, and New York City, that have embraced this.
Instead of sending young offenders to rural prisons far from home, these community programs
have sometimes been adopted.
It seems with some success.
But we’d like to know what you think should happen to young offenders and if you think
youth prison could be improved.
We’d especially like to hear your thoughts if you have been locked up in one of these
places or have been a guard or staff member there.
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Teenage Death Row Prisoner Who Survived His
Own Execution.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.