Viewers are also invited to
study the related items on the page http://
www.ukcouncilhumanrights.co.uk/news-comment.html
PLANS FOR MORE CAGE-BASED SOCIAL CONTROL
FOR CHILDREN
CHILDREN could spend up to four years
being cared for behind bars, under plans to stop them being separated
from their jailed mothers, it was confirmed yesterday. Women inmates
can currently keep their babies for up to 18 months in open prisons
in England and Wales. But, with courts jailing record numbers of women,
prisons chief Martin narey is considering extending that time so youngsters
do not have to be cared for by other family members or, worse still,
be put into care.
The idea was branded "misguided"
by campaigners who said the real solution was to give more mothers
community-based sentences. Nick Flynn, of the Prison Reform Trust,
said: "In trying to do the right thing the Prison Service is
in danger of making things worse. Prison is not a place for children."
Police are investigating allegations
of thirty years of sex abuse at council-run care homes in Lancashire.
Police were called in to investigate
allegations that warders at the Portland young offenders institute
brutalised inmates over a fourteen year period. Four warders were
suspended from duty.
Forty-five teenage inmates at the
notorious Feltham young offenders' institution in London are to be
moved out after Ian Thomas, the deputy governor, resigned in protest
at its "Dickensian" conditions.
