Are we focusing on the right issues, I sometimes wonder? 23 childrten died . . .

Youth Justice 2011–12: Twenty-three children died and self-harm soared

Three children died in prison and incidents of self-harm soared by 21 per cent during a terrible year for under-18s in custody, figures released by the Ministry of Justice revealed yesterday. Twenty more children died while being supervised by youth offending teams in the community during the year 2011-12. 

The statistics also show a 17 per cent rise in the number of times restraint was used against children aged 10 to 17 in custody in England and Wales. Children in custody were restrained 8,419 times, which equates to 23 incidents a day. There were 1,725 incidents of self-harm in custody during the year – 33 reports a week.

Quite apart from the children in custody, I was once a Trustree of the Wakefield High security prison play scheme for visiting children and realised how the children of prisoners are perhaps the most discriminated against in society, after the ones in custody and maybe the children of drug abusers. Anyway I wanted to share this headline from the Howard League for Penal Reforem.