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Criminalising Children In The Care System

John Bowden | 08.06.2012 15:23

Criminalising the behaviour of working class children and feeding them into the Criminal Justice System is a practice that has existed for generations and is now responsible for Britain having the unenviable reputation of Europe's worst jailer of children in terms of the numbers imprisoned.

“Sate raised convicts” form a substantial part of the adult prison population and all share a common genealogy of Children's Homes, Approved Schools, Borstals and Young Offenders Institutions, and finally the long-term prison system. Many children who through no fault of their own enter the so-called Care System are percentage-wise seriously at risk of graduating into the Criminal Justice System and a life disfigured by institutionalisation and social exclusion.

There are currently 10,000 children in local authority care, their number doubling in the past four years, and the government's current “Austerity” agenda with its attack on state benefit and services will so deeply impoverish an already desperately poor section of the population that the number of children from this group entering the Care System is bound to increase significantly.

A leading magistrate and member of the Magistrates' Association Youth Courts Committee, Janis Cauthery, has openly condemned the care system for operating as a doorway into the penal system by regularly prosecuting children for behaviour such as pushing, shoving, and breaking crockery. Behaviour that in normal circumstances would simply be punished by parents is frequently being referred to the police by Children's Homes and children are being charged with criminal offences and placed before the criminal courts. Ms Cauthery has warned that children in care who receive criminal records for what is in reality normal adolescent behaviour are being drawn into a “vicious cycle” of crime, joblessness and imprisonment, that would go on to seriously affect the lives of their own children. Ms Cauthery said: “Many of the young people we see coming to court have never been in trouble before going into care. These young people are often charged with offences that have occurred within the care home, including damage (e.g. to a door, window, or crockery) and assault (often to one of the care home staff involving pushing and shoving). This behaviour is mostly at the lower end of offending, and in a reasonable family environment would never be dealt with by the police or courts. We worry about these children being criminalised”. She added: “Surely the home has a duty to try to help the young people and find other solutions rather than resorting to the courts for minor offences which, in a normal family environment, would not be thought of as offending behaviour”. She went on to warn that the maltreatment of children in care might be the reason for the “anti-social behaviour” in the first place, which is what classically happens in total institutions when inmates resist and challenge brutal regimes.

Recent high-profile cases when neglect by social workers has seriously contributed to the deaths of children already at serious risk from abusive or drug-addicted parents has created a public mood and climate favourable to the placing into care of even more poor and disadvantaged children, and for many of them an entry route into the penal system. The massive empowerment of social workers in the wake of tragedies like the Baby P case to remove more children into care, often for contentious and contested reasons, makes it reasonable to ask the question if many of these children actually face even greater abuse and the risk of destroyed lives by being placed INTO care.

There is clearly a greater propensity on the part of staff supervising the behaviour of children in care to view any non-conformist or disruptive behaviour on the part of such children as potentially criminal and therefore requiring intervention by the police and courts at the earliest opportunity, which also absolves such staff of the responsibility of working closely and consistently with young people in dealing with such behaviour in an emotionally supportive setting. How much easier to just offload such “difficult” children onto the courts and Young Offender System, where an awful self-fulfilling prophecy then takes place along with the process of criminalisation and institutionalisation. Ultimately, the wider society reaps the cost and consequences of this abandonment of vulnerable children to the Criminal Justice System.

John Bowden
HMP Shotts
June 2012

John Bowden

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

also..

09.06.2012 08:27

the disgusting practice of putting young children into detention centres before deporting them to countries where we know their lives may be at risk. These detention centres are prisons and there is plentiful evidence that they traumatise kids, with incidences of bed-wetting, weight loss, self-harm and depression.
The former children's commisioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green wrote a report saying children in detention faced "extreme distress". They are often taken in dawn raids, their doors smashed in, no time given to take personal belongings or say goodbye to their school friends, pets left behind, lives shattered.
Treated like criminals for having foreign-born parents.

anon


Well said

10.06.2012 15:41

Yes, i see what you're getting at 'anon' - further excellent writing from John

George Coombs


A one-sided arguement countered

19.06.2012 14:23

Although I do not disagree with what Mr. Bowden has said in his article, I feel that he has made a very large generalisation, and as a Residential Childacre Worker on the front-line with abusive children/young people, feel angry about the picture he paints of Children's homes. The majority of Workers tollerate a large about of abuse, verbal and phsical, and criminalisation is often the very last option. Many children in Care have suffered abuse and trauma, changing the phyiscal make-up of their brain. Health Services do not meet the needs of these children and often the only way to recieve therapy or help is to highlight the cases to the Police. When a child is criminalised, the public are quick to blame Social Workers, Care Home Workers and the children themselves without understanding the full extent of the difficulties faced by the child. But honestly Mr. Bowden, if a stranger pushed you down the stairs in a shop, you would call the Police. Why not when a child pushes you? It is incidents of this level that require Police intervention. Children's Homes need more support from the public and more understanding before people can make judgements about when to call the Police. Care Home Workers put themselves at risk everyday, unlike many other employment options. More support would enable them to have a more positive effect on the children they care for.

sophie gangther
mail e-mail: rainbow_starchild@hotmail.co.uk