Boy 15, found hanged at Lancaster Farms Young Offenders Institute
@narchist | 30.11.2007 15:12 | Social Struggles
Inquiry as boy, 15, found hanged
Lancaster Farms Young Offenders Institute
Liam McManus had not been identified as being at risk
An investigation has been opened into the death of a 15-year-old boy from St Helens who was found hanged in his cell at a youth offenders institute.
The Prison Reform Trust said the boy's death raises questions about the use of custody for children.
He served half of a six week sentence for breaching a supervision order
The teenager, who died on Thursday, was the 30th child to die in custody in England and Wales since 1990.
Deborah Coles, co-director of Inquest, an organisation which helps families of youngsters who die in custody, said: "It is absolutely desperate. It is deeply shocking that a 15-year-old boy felt so utterly desperate he was found hanged in his cell while in the care of the prison service."
It is believed the teenager was given a single cell to live in because he had not been identified as at risk of self harm.
Ms Coles added: "It raises very fundamental questions about the fact that this country imprisons more children than any other industrial demographic country in the world.
"My desperation with this case is that deaths like this happen too frequently."
Lancaster Farms Young Offenders Institute
Liam McManus had not been identified as being at risk
An investigation has been opened into the death of a 15-year-old boy from St Helens who was found hanged in his cell at a youth offenders institute.
The Prison Reform Trust said the boy's death raises questions about the use of custody for children.
He served half of a six week sentence for breaching a supervision order
The teenager, who died on Thursday, was the 30th child to die in custody in England and Wales since 1990.
Deborah Coles, co-director of Inquest, an organisation which helps families of youngsters who die in custody, said: "It is absolutely desperate. It is deeply shocking that a 15-year-old boy felt so utterly desperate he was found hanged in his cell while in the care of the prison service."
It is believed the teenager was given a single cell to live in because he had not been identified as at risk of self harm.
Ms Coles added: "It raises very fundamental questions about the fact that this country imprisons more children than any other industrial demographic country in the world.
"My desperation with this case is that deaths like this happen too frequently."
@narchist
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
Bitter Crop
30.11.2007 21:25
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved with mankind.
John Donne
We reap a bitter crop.
This one young man escaped his hell
And now he’s tolling like a bell
In his Risley prison cell
And sometime soon he’ll drop –
And so we reap a bitter crop.
His short sharp life was shocked
At brutish bastard British jails
Where boots come in and one fist flails
Before another. Would they never stop?
No. We reap a bitter crop.
What? Not 'on safari'? Not
'White-water-rafting in North Wales'?
'The Caribbean, surely, holiday camps…'
And why not?
Or is it better then to rot
On remand in the Risley jail
Where the boots come in and the fists all flail
And the bastards never stop?
And we reap a bitter crop.
Then gather in the season's haul.
And take him down from the jail cell wall
The tattered cord of noose and all
And watch his limbs and lifeblood flop.
And reap the bitter crop.
In teenage years he never knew
The wasted hand that this crop grew
Nor yet those youth of future years
Who’d fight that hand with more than tears.
For now the state repairs for his inspection.
Young blood’s its great objection?
No, not one single drop.
And so we reap the bitter crop.
Lonely, cold in his prison cell,
Young man tolling like a bell,
Sounding out the morning knell.
Don’t ask for whom it tolls.
A K
A K
intruder upon your world
01.12.2007 04:36
Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world ...
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all ...
And still more often the condemned is the burden bearer for the guiltless and unblamed.
the wrong-doer
Jails are for mantaining inequality
03.12.2007 19:42
digger