Mark Townsend
• ‘Drive fingers into groin’, says prison service manual
• Disclosures follow parents’ freedom of information fight
Carol Pounder from Burnley, whose 14-year-old son Adam Rickwood was found dead at Hassockfield secure training centre in County Durham in August 2004. Photograph: Christopher Thomond
Shocking details of techniques used to inflict pain deliberately on children in privately run jails have been revealed for the first time in a government document obtained by the Observer.
Some of the restraint and self-defence measures approved by the Ministry of Justice include ramming knuckles into ribs and raking shoes down the shins. Other extraordinary passages in the previously secret manual, Physical Control in Care, authorise staff to:
■ “Use an inverted knuckle into the trainee’s sternum and drive inward and upward.”
■ “Continue to carry alternate elbow strikes to the young person’s ribs until a release is achieved.”
■ “Drive straight fingers into the young person’s face, and then quickly drive the straightened fingers of the same hand downwards into the young person’s groin area.”
The disclosure of the prison service manual follows a five-year freedom of information battle. The manual was condemned last night by campaigners as “state authorisation of institutionalised child abuse”.
Published by the HM Prison Service in 2005 and classified as a restricted government document, the manual guides staff on what restraint and self-defence techniques are authorised for use on children as young as 12 in secure training centres. The centres are purpose-built facilities for young offenders up to the age of 17 and run by private firms under government contracts.
Instructions to staff warn that the techniques risk giving children a “fracture to the skull” and “temporary or permanent blindness caused by rupture to eyeball or detached retina”.
The guidance, designed to cope with unruly children, also acknowledges that the measures could cause asphyxia. One passage, explaining how to administer a head-hold on children, adds that “if breathing is compromised the situation ceases to be a restraint and becomes a medical emergency”.
Related posts:
Chinese
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Spanish