Premeditated assassinations of small children

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill 2021 introduced in September 2020, pursue to entitle ‘the police and courts to take more effective action against crime and lead to a fair justice system. Yet, JUSTICE, a human rights charity working to reform the UK justice system believes that certain of Bill’s plan presented a troublesome situation to the UK’s domestic and international human rights obligations. Besides, it seems that there is no rationale for the establishment of these measures.

One of the main discomforts has to do with juvenile justice. Early release has been changed, and the rates at which incarcerated minors are forced to spend time in jail before being released on license have been increased; these alterations would unfairly affect Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic people (BAME), hinder the rehabilitation of those currently imprisoned and induced serious financial costs, as a result of prolonged duration of imprisonment.

As the Bar Council asserts, youthful justice necessitates above all different reforms. In lieu of being a new radical approach to sentencing, the bill should have been an opportune time for problems within the juvenile prison system.

The government assures that the Bill aims ‘to recognises the unique needs of children and intervene early to divert them where possible; custody will be used for serious crime only. The Bill supposedly insists on ‘restoration and rehabilitation’, however, restorative justice programmes in general response to juvenile delinquency are established in England and Wales since 1970s, notably the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which introduced based family group conferences modelled on New Zealand, reparation orders for offenders aged 10 years and over or consultation with victims before any restorative intervention is organised.

Anxiety on the intensification in juvenile delinquency began in the 1990s with the murder of two-year-old James Bulger by two ten-year-old boys. Political parties were imposed to reconsider their attitudes on crime and punishment, known as the populist punitiveness.

For example, the principle that young under a certain age were doli incapax, incapable of evil was a common law hypothesis, incorporated in law since the 14th. It was abrogated in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, ‘to help condemn young offenders who ruin the lives of many communities’, with the argument that, ‘children between 10 and 13 years undoubtedly could make the difference between good and bad’.

This appealed to comments. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights advised that the criminal age of responsibility to be adjusted ‘in accordance with the standards in force throughout Europe’.

It has never been possible to determine which standards have importance in operating a children best interests. It was frequently maintained that what was exercised was solely ‘a very subtle form of social control.’

Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) were instituted by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Some questioned whether the concept of antisocial behaviour was fantasised.

The at issue facet is that a violation of order permits incarceration to five years, even if the initial offence was not hit with custody.

42% of ASBOs are disregarded, and 46% of non-observance meet with a jail decision. 50 children per month were sent to prison under ASBO.

An investigation indicated that 35% of the ASBO imposed under 17 years old since 2004 were on children with mental health disorders or learning difficulties. For example, there was the case of a 14-year-old child with the cognitive abilities of a 7-year-old child, who had a curfew imposed but couldn’t tell the time.

90% of minors have mental health or substance abuse problems; a quarter have literacy and numeracy skills under those a 7-year-old child or have endured physical and sexual violence. Activists critiqued the continued use of custodial sentences for young offenders, saying that, ‘”the government’s obsession” with street-corner teens contributed to increase the number of young people in prison’. 

One of the deplorable consequences of the incarceration of young teenagers is death. In 2004, Adam Rickwood, 14 years old, became the youngest child to die in the penitentiary.

Between 1990 and 2005, 29 children died. Two of them were deliberate. And between 1998 and 2002, 1,659 incidents of self-harm or attempted suicide were reported. In 2020, it was reported that Annelise Gordon, 18 years old, had committed suicide in her cell. This makes it clear that the penal institution is an event emotionally harmful.

The physical restraints procedures employed in houses of correction; methods varying depending on the detention centre; such as, inserting a prison officer’s knuckles into a child’s back to exert pressure on their lower ribs, or using the back of an officer’s hand in an upward motion on the child’s nose,  can lawfully be utilised to up to half an hour.

Hundreds of children are still exposed to these admonitions, undeterred by Gareth Myatt’s case, 15 years old, choked to death on his vomit while three staff members held him down on his bed through a control method appellate a ‘double-seated embrace’, in Northamptonshire in 2004.

No-change despite an inspection on juvenile offenders’ treatment, denouncing the systematised practice of physical restraint, strip searches, and forced seclusion to handle children’s comportment. In 2005, a 16-year-old boy died while in isolation in the Blackburn segregation unit.

Further, there is racism issues. Zahid Murabek’s was murdered in 2000 by his white racist cellmate in Feltham.

The government rejected family’s demand for a public inquiry, but an independent one found evidence of a culture of racism within the house, and throughout the prison system. For example, a game called ‘gladiatorial’: officers place white and black prisoners in a cell, and bet on how long it will take them before violence sets in between them.

The deaths of African-Caribbean in police custody stem from the fact that prison staff have a tendency to overreact to their disruptive behaviour, justifying it with a ‘Big, Black and Dangerous‘ stereotype.

In 2019, UNICEF determine that the UK juvenile justice system were failing in its duty to uphold children’s human rights and protect them from harm. 45 recommendations were made to the government regarding the matters of BAME’ S overrepresentation, mediocre detention, and ongoing usage of inhumane practices like confinement, tasers and spitting.

Black children were 4 times more tending to be arrested than whites. 51% of tasers were put to use on BAME, and others.

To conclude, it is unequivocal that the UK has a body of matters to deal with regarding the youth justice system. Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts’ bill will just spawn more child deaths! By passing over what resulting in the youthful prison environment, the English government just pre-planned the deaths of children.