News

Sixteen-year-old Joseph Scholes was nine days into his prison sentence when he was found hanged at Stoke Heath Young Offenders Institution last March. His distress was such that he had torn the finger nails from his hands and scratched the word "mum" onto his leg.

Joseph had been a victim of domestic violence and suffered serious sexual abuse at the hands of a relative on his father's side. After his parents divorced, Joseph spent some time in care in a children's home. In his teenage years, he spiralled into depression, began to self-harm - at one stage slashing his face 30 times with a knife - and attempted suicide.


It was against this backdrop that Joseph was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for playing a peripheral role in a street robbery while in care. Joseph received the maximum penalty for his age and crime - his only previous conviction was hitting an ambulance worker who had intervened during a suicide attempt.

"Why did they sentence such a vulnerable child?" asks Joseph's mother, Yvonne. "Custody is supposed to be the last resort, but it patently wasn't."

Rehabilitation agency Nacro and Inquest are calling for a public inquiry into Joseph's death. But Joseph's case is far from unique. Last year 12 under-21 year olds committed suicide in prisons and, so far this year, 10 have taken their own lives.

However, when Office for National Statistics research shows that 95 per cent of young offenders aged between 16 and 20 exhibit signs of mental health problems, the suicides come as no surprise. Indeed, Mental Health Foundation research found that young offenders were around three times more likely than the general population to experience mental health problems.

The risk factors that led young people to offend, such as erratic parenting or living in deprivation, also contributed to mental health problems, it found. The risky behaviour of offending and interactions with the criminal justice system also causes stress, anxiety and depression, which can lead to mental distress.

"How much mental health lies behind offending needs to be looked at as a whole," says Fran Russell, Howard League for Penal Reform's assistant director.

Nasa Begum, policy officer at mental health charity Mind, says that by the time many young people offend, their symptoms of mental distress are quite severe. But there is a high threshold for eligibility of children and adolescent mental health services leading to children not being diagnosed.

According to Juliet Lyon, Prison Reform Trust director, the health service often doesn't want to get involved with challenging young people. "It is more convenient for the health service to allow them to go into the criminal justice system, as prisons have no choice but to take them".

When a child offends, mental health problems should be detected through assessments with youth offending team workers prior to court. If the offence requires detention, all 12 to 14-year-old boys and 12 to 16-year-old girls should be placed in local authority secure children's homes (LASCH) or secure training centres (STC)where there is a higher staff-children ratio and a more child-centred approach than YOIs.

Boys aged 15 and 16 deemed "vulnerable" by YOT workers can also be placed in LASCHs or STCs. But those placed in prisons are supposed to receive more intensive monitoring.

Lyon explains that there are a small proportion of violent offenders with severe mental health problems who need secure psychiatric hospital placements. But insufficient beds and a difficult, "messy" procedure to access hospitals means offenders are often "left languishing in prisons".

For most, with less severe problems, the choices are minimal. There is a health care wing, but Russell warns: "The reality is that beds are short so staff will put them on the wing if they possibly can." As a result, many children with mental health problems are in detention and face numerous problems. Firstly, Begum says, the philosophy is of "containment and control" rather than treatment.

John Coughlan, the Association of Directors of Social Services' lead on youth crime, adds that once a young person is in custody, "there is a strong likelihood that they will be dislocated from services they may have previously received in the community".


Overcrowding in prisons means young people are moved around, creating an unstable environment and Lyon warns that Prison Service staff are "compromised professionally" because they want to do their best but are inadequately trained to work with these young people.

At the same time, Russell is increasingly concerned by the use of segregation where the most "challenging" young people are sent if they are disruptive. Although the experience should address the behaviour that resulted in the child being sent to the segregation unit, they often receive less of a regime there than they would on the wing. However, her main concern is the existence of special cells to deal with "the most difficult children". Here, children claim they are stripped of their clothes and placed in rooms with no natural light, furniture or toilet. The only object evident is a bucket, and the naked child is provided with just a jacket and a blanket.

"It is clear to us that these rooms are being used for young men who are mentally ill and it is totally inappropriate," she states. The rooms are allegedly intended to allow disruptive young people who cannot be controlled in any other way to calm down for a few hours. However, the charity fears children are being held there for "several days at a time".

This evidence shows that prisons are totally unsuitable for children with mental health problems. Incarceration is likely to exacerbate mental distress. Self-harming is common in such circumstances. Russell describes the most horrendous self-harm cases where young people place the insides of biro pens into their veins. "If you ever needed evidence that these are damaged, disturbed young people, you just have to look at what they do to themselves." Yvonne Scholes believes it is a miracle that more children do not kill themselves in custody. She asks: "Why are vulnerable children placed in such unsuitable accommodation?"

Her views are echoed by many who work in the sector. Coughlan says the ADSS would like to see all school age offenders removed from custody and placed in LASCHs or STCs. There have been no suicides in these settings and he believes that they are able to provide a safer environment for distressed young offenders.

However the Howard League feels STCs are unsuitable as they focus on containment rather than the child's welfare. "Secure children's homes have been established a lot longer and the ethos is about taking care of young people, identifying problems and meeting them," Russell says.

The charity wants to see more LASCHs, but the Youth Justice Board announced last month that it is seeking to reduce the number of beds it commissions from LASCHs and increase STCs which provide "better value for money" - a move condemned by Scholes as "shockingly disgraceful". But as Russell highlights: "A lot of these children should not be in prison in the first place," and Lyon says she "can't think of a less appropriate place" for this group.

Russell calls for a total review of services for young people and says "we need to look at the reasons why young people offend instead of just putting them into prison".

Better mental health services in the community would improve matters for many young people dramatically, most agree. And if secure settings are needed they should "be therapeutic rather than punitive", according to Russell. "This is the most pressing problem facing the youth justice system - not antisocial behaviour as civil servants seem to believe."