UK: Children assaulted routinely in Young Offenders' Institutions
01 January 2008
Thousands of assaults are being carried out each year on children in custody by the people employed to look after them. Hundreds suffer cuts and bruises and some require hospital treatment for dislocated or broken bones. Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England, has highlighted the "over-use of restraint and force" in Young Offender Institutions and Secure Training Centres, and is calling for an immediate ban on the practice of painful restraint, which includes hitting children in the face, twisting their thumbs and limbs and pinning them down in painful stress positions as a form of punishment or to ensure compliance.
In a new report to a government-commissioned inquiry into the issue, he writes:
The use of violence and force to control and punish some of the most vulnerable children in society is unacceptable.
Physical restraint - which is supposed to be a last resort - was used 3,036 times in Secure Training Centres (STCs) in 2005/06. More than 50 cases were judged so serious that a report was made to the Youth Justice Board (YJB).
Staff at STCs, which house some of the country's most vulnerable children, are trained to subdue children using forms of physical violence such as sharp blows to the septum area of the nose, bending thumbs to near breaking point and forcing a fist against ribs in the back. Young people in STCs, Youth Offender Institutions (YOIs) and Secure Children's Homes (SCHs) were subjected to more than 2,000 cases of restraint between April and June this year, according to figures from the Youth Justice Board. Eighty of these required medical treatment for injuries such as cuts, concussion, bruising or sprains; children in STCs were twice as likely as those in YOIs to suffer injury as a result of restraint.
Answers to recent Parliamentary Questions have revealed a catalogue of hundreds of injuries suffered by young people in 10 YOIs over the past two years. These range from severe nosebleeds, cuts, and bruising, to fractured or broken bones. Young people in YOIs face what is described as "pain compliant" control and restraint designed for adult prisoners.
A government-commissioned inquiry into the risks of death or injury associated with physical restraints is under way. In his submission to the inquiry, Sir Al Aynsley-Green concludes that there needs to be a review of the juvenile justice system and that restraints should be used only as a final option, and even then "only when the child poses an imminent threat of injury to themselves or others". He calls for improved training of staff to safeguard children and says:
The use of techniques to inflict pain is in violation of the child's right under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.... We believe the practice in relation to restraint in some YOIs and STCs is in clear breach of the UNCRC.
In some circumstances it may also contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, he said.
"Some of the restraints could be viewed as assaults. We're doing things to children which they don't even do in Guantanamo Bay," says Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform. "Painful distraction is assault and I cannot see why the police aren't involved in investigating it," she says.
Sunday Independent 30.12.07