UNITED KINGDOM: Campaigners want children to be told about unlawful restraint

Summary: Children's rights campaigners are set to argue that children have the right to know if they could be entitled to compensation for being unlawfully restrained in secure training centres.

[22 November 2011] - At a High Court hearing set to begin today (22 November), campaigners will claim that former detainees of secure training centres must be told if they were potentially subjected to unlawful restraint procedures, so they can seek compensation or other forms of redress.

Lawyers for the Children's Rights Alliance for England (Crae) will call for those who were restrained for the purposes of discipline or subjected to "distraction" techniques, such as blows to the nose, to be told the treatment was unlawful.

Crae’s national co-ordinater Carolyne Willow said: "It was not children's responsibility to know about, challenge and stop unlawful and abusive treatment.

"Children in custody are among the most disadvantaged in society and they were held in closed institutions where unlawful restraint was routine and ordinary. It was the state, and the private contractors, that were duty-bound to protect the welfare and rights of these vulnerable children."

Last year, Crae won a three-year campaign which called for the Youth Justice Board to release its training manual governing restraint in privately run prisons.

Latest statistics released to parliament show government officials have been given 285 reports of children's lives being endangered and of restraint leading to serious injuries and hospitalisation in secure training centres since 2006.

Willow added: "This case raises a fundamental question about the state's responsibility to vulnerable children in its care. Faced with the knowledge that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children were unlawfully and abusively treated in these private prisons, and where the treatment was presented at the time as being entirely lawful, should government officials now have a responsibility to notify potential victims that their rights were infringed; or should these abuses remain hidden and unchallenged?"

Further Information:

• UK: Judicial review of use of child restraint in detention facilities approved (5 September 2011) 
• UK: Gov't axes school safeguarding rules for the second time (4 September 2011) 
• UK: Education secretary slackens rules on use of physical force in schools (2 September 2011)
• UK: Court of Appeals quashes child restraint rules (28 July 2008)
• NETHERLANDS: Tethered teenager psychiatric patient shocks Netherlands (26 January 2011)
• More on children's rights in the United Kingdom