“It gives you a lot of time to think, and my thoughts are not always positive,” John tells his lawyer, Jude Lanchin, on the rare occasion that he has access to the prison’s video link service. “I have trouble sleeping,” he adds.
In the UK, adolescents and children aged 18 and under are held in what the government calls safe children’s homes, safe training centers and institutions for juvenile offenders. The attorneys we spoke to universally refer to institutions like prisons.
A CNN team was allowed to observe Lanchin’s call with his client and changed his name due to UK reporting restrictions for ongoing criminal cases involving children.
“I have thirty minutes a day and other than that, I’m in my cell, just thinking,” says John. “There is a lot of time to think, and that bothers you a little.”
The restrictions have been imposed by the UK government as part of the Covid-19 blockade. Visits were temporarily suspended and time outside prison cells was severely reduced, as part of broader measures to enforce social distancing in prisons due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to several attorneys and experts CNN spoke with, these restrictions have left children like John in solitary confinement.
The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Mandela Rules, define solitary confinement as 22 hours a day or more without significant human contact.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice prison and probation service told CNN: “The decision to impose restrictions on daily life was made on the advice of experts in public health and has helped save lives, but we know that this It is difficult for the children and that is why the support for mental health and education continued all the time. ”
“Video calls have also increased, children have been given additional phone credit to keep in touch with their families, and we have maximized activities in the room. We are now working to safely relax restrictions and reintroduce visits at next weeks”.
Impact on children’s mental health.
Jude Lanchin has become increasingly concerned with the welfare of his client. “There are many times that I called him on the phone and he sounded very, very low,” she recalls.
John, who was ordered to be detained while awaiting trial due to the seriousness of the alleged crime, has been awaiting a trial that was indefinitely postponed due to Covid-19. Still innocent until his guilt is proven, he has no idea how much longer he will have to wait.
Lanchin asked the court to grant him bail due to the severity of the conditions, but has so far been unsuccessful.
John is black, and Lanchin believes that institutionalized racism has affected his case. Rather than being treated as a child facing solitary confinement, Lanchin believes that the courts have treated him as an adult who may pose a threat to society. “They are not seen as children. They are not seen as young people,” he explains. CNN asked the Ministry of Justice when the recommendations outlined in the Lammy Review would be implemented to address racism in the criminal justice system, but did not receive an answer to this question.
Activists are concerned that prolonged isolation may have a lasting impact on children’s mental health. Lanchin says John applied for mental health help when he entered the prison, but only received it several months later.
“Many of the young people who come are of black and minority ethnicity and by definition […] they will be among the poorest in our country, “shadow attorney general David Lammy told CNN.” Many of them will have experienced trauma in different aspects of their lives. And many of them will have been pimps or abused by adults who have put them in this criminal environment. “
Minorities overrepresented in prisons
Government data on English and Welsh prisons reflect over-representation of people of color and other locked-up ethnic minorities. They represent 27% of the prison population in general, according to government data from March 2020. And in the juvenile prison population, blacks and other ethnic minorities represent more than half of the inmates, according to the custody data from May. 2020. But the 2011 census shows that blacks, Asians, and other ethnic minorities make up just 14% of the general population.
While the total number of children detained has decreased significantly in the past ten years, this decrease has been less among the ethnic minority population, explains Tim Bateman, vice president of the National Association for Juvenile Justice. “The level of representation depends on the background: it is more pronounced among African and Caribbean children and mixed heritage,” he said. “It is an absolutely shocking pattern.”
The disproportionate number of black children and children from other ethnic minorities in custody and their worsening conditions during the Covid-19 lockdown are part of an ongoing debate on racial inequality in the country.
Following the Black Lives Matter protests in the UK over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a new commission on racial and ethnic disparities with a comment in the Daily Telegraph.
But Lammy, who wrote a 2017 government-commissioned report on the treatment of black, Asian, and other ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system, rejected the plan as a pointless gesture, written on the back of a package. of cigarettes.
Lammy Review Recommendations
In an interview with CNN, Lammy said he was “horrified” by the systemic use of prolonged solitary confinement for youths in prisons, where black children and other minorities are disproportionately represented.
“It is deeply, very shocking and worrying to discover that young people in our own country are being treated in this horrendous way,” he said. “The coronavirus is a challenge to the system, but it is not a call for democratic countries like ours to abandon the standards that we have fought so hard for in this country. It is very, very disappointing and worrying that we are treating the youth of this country. way “.
In his report, the Labor MP made 35 specific recommendations to improve justice and the criminal justice system for minorities, including the so-called “deferred prosecution”, which allows criminals who have had no more than one sentence and who are at low risk for the public, to voluntarily accept a rehabilitation program before filing a statement, as an alternative to prosecution.
The government responded to Lammy in February 2020, saying it had made progress on some of the comments included in the review, including the recommendation of the “deferred prosecution” model and the commitment to publish more and better data on race and ethnicity.
However, Lammy told CNN that the government had been “too slow to implement my recommendations.”
“Our juvenile justice system has not been reformed since the early days of Tony Blair, in which we committed to reducing the number of youth in the juvenile justice system and in prison. And we succeeded,” he said. “But what we didn’t reduce is the number of black and ethnic minority youth in the system. That has grown and grown and grown.”
CNN asked the Ministry of Justice when the recommendations outlined in the Lammy Review would be implemented to address racism in the criminal justice system, but did not receive an answer to this question.
Inhuman conditions’
John, the 16-year-old who lives in prison during the lockdown, says months of solitary confinement have affected his mental health.
“Before I say that I am very stable in that sense but now […] I can be fine a second and then the next … I would say that it is deteriorating … honestly because I realize that I am myself, that is the worrying part, that is, I am seeing myself. I can be fine for a second and then I’ll think of something and then my whole mood just changes. ”
According to several attorneys CNN has spoken to, John is not alone in feeling this way.
Laura Janes is the legal director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, a charity that works with children in prison, and has released a report that raises concerns about the “severe” regime that children are subjected to due to Covid-19.
Janes has been receiving almost daily calls from detained children and has noticed a dramatic worsening in his conditions.
“Many of them are awake all night and sleep during the day, it is a very common thing that happens when you are locked in a small space without any stimulation for a long time,” Janes tells CNN.
She believes the conditions are inhumane. “As a parent, if I were to lock your child in a room or laundry room for 20 hours a day, I’m sure social services would be absolutely justified in investigating that and taking serious action,” she says.
The UK legal system is divided by region, so these conditions only apply to prisons in England and Wales. CNN contacted the Scottish prison service and learned that the boys continued to spend most of their time outside their cells during the lockdown, due to the small number of inmates.
Richard Stewart, a press officer for the Northern Ireland Department of Justice, told CNN that “a tight regime has been established that actively promotes social estrangement” and restricts movement without mixing children in other units. He added that there is no solitary confinement of children there.
Legal advice restrictions
Lawyers tell CNN that Covid-19 restrictions have also prevented children from accessing their legal advice.
For those with ongoing cases, this is especially concerning. Mel Stooks is a lawyer representing various children in English prisons. Despite the UK government saying it would install telephones in all cells, Stooks has several clients who claim they don’t have one. She tells CNN that communication barriers threaten children’s basic right to receive legal advice.
“I haven’t been able to have a single phone call with my client since he was sent … five weeks ago.” Stooks tells CNN.
The Justice Ministry said it would provide additional phones for inmates during Covid-19 in 55 jails, but did not say that the phones would be available to all inmates.
John’s conversation with his lawyer, Lanchin, is the first video call they have ever had. When the conversation ends, John falls silent, a hint of sadness creeping into his voice as he politely answers Lanchin’s questions.
Lanchin reassures him: “I’ll be in touch next week anyway, I’ll call you on Monday. Okay?”
“Well.” John responds quietly.
“Be careful, very, very nice to see you finally,” continues Lanchin.
John responds, “Good meeting. […] you finally too. ”
Time is up and the call ends. John must return to his cell to spend more hours alone. Lanchin looks at her laptop in shock when John disappears from the screen.
“Gee, he’s about 12 years old. My God, he’s very young,” she says.
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