Prison inspector denounces treatment of child inmates

The treatment of children in jail - including routine strip searching - was denounced yesterday by Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons.

She said children, many of whom could have suffered abuse, were handled under rules drawn up for adult males. Speaking to the British Institute of Human Rights in London, Ms Owers questioned whether such methods protected the interests of children and demanded an overhaul by the Home Office.

She said: "Can the detention of children in units of 60, and establishments of 400, really promote their welfare and development? What is the rationale and proportionality of routinely strip-searching children on arrival in prison, particularly for a population more likely than the average to have experienced abuse?

"And if a child resists, can you justify him or her being held down by adults, in painful wristlocks, and forcibly undressed?"

Ms Owers, speaking in a lecture sponsored by The Independent, said her inspection team had discovered two jails where the inmates were "routinely stripped naked for searching, and that included children".

The penal reform charity Nacro has complained that the number of under-15s placed in custody has risen eight-fold in the past decade and threatens to put the Government in breach of United Nations conventions.

Ms Owers also warned that overzealous application of security rules resulted in some bizarre anomalies. She cited a women's prison where inmates are allowed china plates but not china mugs, a men's prison that banned denture fixative in case it could be used to block locks and one that forbade Afro-Caribbeans from receiving cans of hair gel.

Ms Owers said there was growing concern over numbers of prisoners who kill themselves - currently running at an average of two a week.

She warned that overcrowding was a factor, warning that inmates may be locked up for 23 hours a day, two to a cell, in a cell designed for one.

"The pressure on prisons and the consequences for prisoners, are huge," she said.

Ms Owers delivered a thinly-veiled plea for the Prison Inspectorate - which could be merged with the Probation Inspectorate following a Government review - to be kept "robustly independent".