‘A Poor Prospect Indeed’: The State’s Disavowal of Child Abuse Victims in Youth Custody, 1960–1990

Jarman Jarman,Lanskey Lanskey

doi:10.3390/soc9020027

Abstract

Child abuse in youth custody in England and Wales is receiving an unprecedented degree of official attention. Historic allegations of abuse by staff in custodial institutions which held children are now being heard by the courts and by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), and some criminal trials have resulted in convictions. A persistent question prompted by these investigations is that of why the victims of custodial child abuse were for so long denied recognition as such, or any form of redress. Drawing on original documentary research, this article aims to explain why and how state authorities in England and Wales failed to recognise the victimisation of children held in penal institutions between 1960 and 1990, and argues that this failure constitutes a disavowal of the state’s responsibility. We show that the victims of custodial child abuse were the victims of state crimes by omission, because the state failed to recognise or to uphold a duty of care. We argue further that this was possible because the occupational cultures and custodial practices of penal institutions failed to recognise the structural and agentic vulnerabilities of children. Adult staff were granted enormous discretionary power which entitled them to act (and to define their actions) without effective constraint. These findings, we suggest, have implications for how custodial institutions for children should think about the kinds of abuse which are manifest today.

Highlights

The Research ContextSince 2014, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has been ‘consider[ing] the extent to which State and non-State institutions [in England and Wales] have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation’ [1]
We present contextual materials drawn mainly from secondary literatures, describing first how the concept of ‘childhood’ and the regulation of sexual consent have changed during the period we cover (Section 2.2); describing how cultural perceptions of ‘child abuse’ and risk to children have changed during the same period (Section 2.3); and introducing shifts in institutional landscape during this period (Section 2.4)
Our systematic search strategy evolved pragmatically: we browsed the The National Archives (TNA) catalogue for records in the same series as those we identified through systematic searches; we followed up cross-references; and where necessary we reviewed records covering both adult and youth custody, assuming that Prison Department policies applied to both

Summary

Introduction

Since 2014, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has been ‘consider[ing] the extent to which State and non-State institutions [in England and Wales] have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation’ [1]. Set up in the wake of widespread public and media coverage of historic child sexual abuse (CSA) allegations, one of its thirteen sub-investigations concerns children in custodial institutions. IICSA hearings on recent allegations were held in 2018; further ones relating to historic abuse may follow. Many of the most notorious non-recent allegations relate to HM Detention Centre Medomsley. Described by prison inspectors in 1977 as a place which ‘has never hit the headlines’, where ‘nothing of any import ever occurs’ and which ‘is unlikely to cause any problems’ [2], Medomsley closed without fanfare in 1988. In the early 2000s, it did hit the headlines: two former officers, Neville

Objectives

Results

Conclusion