UK report: Imprisoning children may lead to sexual offences in adulthood

Submitted by fathers4fairness on Mon, 2015-02-23 03:52

In the UK, the Howard League for Prison Reform recently released a report entitled "Imprisoning children may lead to sexual offences in adulthood" - raising justifiable concerns about the treatment of incarcerated UK youth. An article on www.OpenDemocracy.net suggests this may be creating a future cohort of sexual offenders. The Howard League for Prison Reform will be holding a Conference on these and related Penal Reform issues in London on Tues March 17, 2015. Excerpt from first cited source link above:

'Sending children to prison may make them more likely to commit sexual offences in adulthood, Britain’s first-ever independent review of sex behind bars has found.

The Commission on Sex in Prison reached its conclusion after hearing evidence that the single-sex prison environment, with its high levels of violence and use of force, could lead to the development of sexual aggression.

The Commission found that the needs of vulnerable children could not be met in large prisons with low staff-to-child ratios. All prisons for boys in England hold at least 130 children, and the government plans to build an even larger institution – a secure college with a capacity of 320.

Evidence from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the US suggests that placing children in prisons holding 100 or more puts them at risk of sexual abuse from other children and staff.'

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Also submitted by fathers4fairness:

The UK apparently incarcerates more juveniles than any other European country and 95 per cent are boys 15-17.

Here are some conclusions raised in the report:

  • There are over 1,000 children in custody in England and Wales (Youth Justice Board (YJB), 2014a).
  • Three quarters of the children in custody are held in prisons with 95 per cent being boys.
  • More than 2,600 children were received into prison during 2013 (Ministry of Justice (MOJ), 2014).
  • The average time spent in custody in 2011–2012 was 85 days (YJB and MoJ, 2014).
  • The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study (Felitti et al., 1998) found that adults who had experienced multiple adverse childhood experiences were more likely to have had 50 or more sexual partners in their lifetime and to have contracted a sexually transmitted infection.
  • Multiple adverse childhood experiences are also a risk factor for violence including sexual violence (Duke et al., 2010).
  • As children approach adulthood, they are exploring their relationships with others, developing intimate relationships and learning about issues such as equality, respect, sexuality, gender identity and sexual consent.
  • Children in prison will be going through this process of transition while in custody, with little or no contact with their families and no physical contact with teenagers of the same or opposite sex. Their opportunities to form relationships and model the behaviour of adults in normal healthy relationships are severely restricted.
  • On coercive sexual activity, far less research has been conducted in the UK than in the U.S. The U.S BJS found that 9.5 per cent of children in US custody reported one or more incidents of sexual victimisation in prison during the past year.
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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2015-02-23 04:30