Future insecure
Today the Howard League is publishing Future insecure, a briefing based on conversations with young people who have been in penal custody. We are recommending that local authority run secure units are the only form of incarceration for children that is both safe and promotes crime-free outcomes. Prisons and the jails run for profit by the security companies should all be shut down and the children who would have been sent there should instead be managed carefully in communities.
One of the most compelling arguments for closure of the profit making secure training centres (STCs) is the high level of restraint of children. Madeleine Moon MP tabled a Parliamentary Question on 23 January that revealed the extent of such physical restraint of children. In three years children were restrained 6,265 times resulting in 1,344 injuries – and don’t forget there are only four of these jails holding fewer than 250 children at any one time.
Prisons and STCs have a dismal history of violence, continuation of crime and children dying. It is shameful that we as a nation continue to use prisons for children when we know they promote a cycle of crime, both inside the institution and on release. It is shameful that we have allowed security companies to run jails for children that have failed to prevent future crime or turn round the lives of difficult children and all for a quick buck. It is shameful that so much public money has been squandered on failed carceral policies when it could instead have been invested in the lives of children.
The film on our website shows that there are a handful of places that are safe for the few, the very few, children who do require custody. Sadly the Youth Justice Board is cutting the number of beds in these local authority units yet again and consequently more children will be placed in danger at prisons and STCs.
Watch our film, contact your local MP and councillors, and help change the lives of children.
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February 9, 2012
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Frances Crook · 
One Comment
Tags: youth justice, Youth Justsice Board · Posted in: Children and young people, Uncategorized
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One Response
Thank you Frances, I am in Australia, and as a former manager of a large youth remand centre, am fervently against this type of institution. There are the obvious problematic aspects, but states all over the world need to catch up with research on the effects of developmental trauma and that providing a healing approach to pain rather than a punitive approach to behaviour is the only way to make a difference to young people and to the community. In addition, large institutions leave themselves open to ethical deterioration and adult punitive attitudes in the police judiciary. For more detailed comment please see my blog http://www.knightlamp.blogspot.com.au and in particular these two articles:
http://www.knightlamp.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/ethical-use-of-self-reflections-of.html
http://knightlamp.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/most-disgusting-thing-you-can-do-to.html
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