Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Foreword by Benjamin Zephaniah
- one Introduction
- two ‘Things were not right at home’
- three ‘They just don’t listen’
- four ‘I think it’s quite like rape’
- five ‘I can’t breathe’
- six ‘What gives them the right to hit a child in the nose?’
- seven ‘We should be able to hug our families’
- eight ‘Every night I’m starving’
- nine Children were ‘given bags to urinate in’
- ten ‘The violence is unbelievable’
- eleven ‘Listen to the kids’
- twelve They shouldn’t be there
- Notes
- Index
nine - Children were ‘given bags to urinate in’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Foreword by Benjamin Zephaniah
- one Introduction
- two ‘Things were not right at home’
- three ‘They just don’t listen’
- four ‘I think it’s quite like rape’
- five ‘I can’t breathe’
- six ‘What gives them the right to hit a child in the nose?’
- seven ‘We should be able to hug our families’
- eight ‘Every night I’m starving’
- nine Children were ‘given bags to urinate in’
- ten ‘The violence is unbelievable’
- eleven ‘Listen to the kids’
- twelve They shouldn’t be there
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Probably the most iconographic footage associated with children in custody vehicles dates from 1993, when Robert Thompson and Jon Venables made their first appearance at South Sefton magistrates’ court after being charged with the murder of two-year-old James Bulger. The blue police vans these two young children were thought to be travelling in were attacked with eggs, bottles, stones and fists, and some in the baying crowd screamed for their necks to be snapped. The author Blake Morrison reflects on news clippings from that day over 20 years ago:
The men in the photograph had come wanting to kill the kids who’d killed the kid, because there’s nothing worse than killing a kid.
It turned out that the primary school boys had been led away from the court in cars, and the vans had been decoys, such was the level of public vitriol. No child transported to or from an English court has since attracted so much interest, although there is plenty to be troubled about.
A few years after the police vans were attacked in Merseyside, the then chief inspector of prisons, David Ramsbotham, undertook a review of the treatment of young prisoners. He reported that the prison transportation of children had been recently contracted out to companies with vehicles containing inbuilt cells, and that this had been done ‘in the interests of improved security’. He goes on to describe the conditions in these vehicles:
Each cubicle in these vehicles is about the size of a telephone box and contains nothing more than a bench seat and a small window. My team found many examples of children and young adults locked in these cramped conditions for hours while awaiting delivery to the establishment to which they are being sent.
During 2009/10, researchers from the Howard League for Penal Reform discussed prison life with 55 teenagers. The journey from court to prison was particularly grueling. The charity’s subsequent report explains why vehicles transporting prisoners are known as ‘sweatboxes’:
[This nickname] reflects the conditions: they are in a cramped space, caged by wire; with heating always at extremes; they’re dirty; and they ‘stink’.
One boy described feeling as if prisoners in security vans were treated ‘like animals’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Children behind BarsWhy the Abuse of Child Imprisonment Must End, pp. 193 - 210Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2015