Dry Those Tears, Eric…

Eric Allison (‘Guardian’ prison correspondent – naturally, a former prisoner!) comments on the case of Adam Rickwood.

In the evening of 8 August, 2004, a 14-year-old boy was ordered to his room after, allegedly, giving cheek to an adult. He refused to obey and physical force was used against him. The truth about the terrible consequences of this most ordinary example of childish non-compliance finally emerged yesterday, when an inquest jury in Easington, Co Durham, found that Adam Rickwood, the youngest child to die in custody in modern times, had been treated unlawfully by staff at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre (STC) in the same county, before he ended his young life at the end of a makeshift noose.

So, Eric, what should they have done? You are quick to condemn, but do you ever suggest alternatives?

… STC rules, drawn up by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) clearly stated that restraint, for non-compliance, should not be used on the children in their care.

So boundaries (sadly lacking for a lot of these children, I suspect) are set, but there are to be no consequences should they not be respected?

But the staff concerned went further than restraint: they applied a "nose distraction" technique to the boy – in plain speaking, a sharp blow to his nose.

Adam was incensed and wrote in his suicide note "What right have they got to hit a child?"

The right to ensure an unruly child complies with the orders given to him, for what else could they do?

The 'Guardian' would be better off asking why this boy was moved from the unit where he was doing well to the unit he died in, since there seems no reason for it other than an administrative error. It might yield better results than railing against a system where obstructive children are made to obey the rules they have perhaps lacked all their lives...

The use of nose distraction technique – and restraint for non-compliance – is now banned in STCs.

And they are left with what? Harsh language?

Shamefully, that is no thanks to those charged with the care of young children who take a wrong turn in life. Following Rickwood's death – and that of 16-year-old Gareth Myatt, who died while being restrained in another STC in the same year – the Ministry of Justice, backed by the Youth Justice Board, tried to bring the use of restraint for non-compliance, along with other painful methods into STC rules. In July 2008 they were foiled by the court of appeal, which ruled that such methods were an infringement of young people's fundamental human rights.

We hear nothing but these children’s ‘rights’, and so very rarely does it seem as if they have any responsibilities.

During this second inquest, some members of the jury openly wept when they heard of the treatment imposed on a troubled young boy with a history of self-harming, incarcerated some 150 miles away from his home and family.

Oh, boo hoo!

In 2004, I was present at another inquest, when another jury shed tears on hearing how 16-year-old Joseph Scholes had taken his life in a Young Offenders Institution.

Oh, boo hoo again!

Deborah Coles, the co-director of Inquest, which supported Adam Rickwood's family throughout their campaign, believes that only a public inquiry into the way we treat children who break the law will bring about change.

She says the whole population should hear the evidence that made juries into deaths in custody weep.

You know what makes me weep, Eric?

It’s the constant ‘you can’t do that!’ from the loony left who would never, ever in a million years dream of tackling the sort of job these people undertake with damaged, often violent and disturbed children day in and day out.

The ones who sit smugly on the sidelines, pontificating about methods for controlling these children, sobbing into their handkerchiefs over the wrecked lives they have lead, while ignoring the lives they have often wrecked to get themselves sent to such a place…

I endorse her view on a highly personal level. For I was the same age as Adam when I first went into custody, more than half a century ago – and I weep now when I think how rich my life has been since then, and despair that we allow such damaged children to suffer the kind of treatment to which we would not dream of subjecting our own children.

I weep for their victims.

Oh, and the ‘Guardian’ might also turn some attention on the mother, who smuggled in cigarettes for the boy in total defiance of the rules of the establishment, which caused the fatal conflict.

Any other mother encouraging cigarette consumption in her child would be denigrated by the progressives, wouldn't they? Never mind the clear impression she gave him that rules were there to be broken...