Juvenile In Justice
Gallery Guide
Introduction
Throughout history, the UK and USA have influenced each other’s approaches to the detention of young people.
UK juvenile offender populations are decreasing. 50% less children and young people are incarcerated in the UK than there were in 2010. In the US juvenile incarceration rates have declined 77% between 2000-2020. However, the safety of incarcerated young people is also declining. In the last decade, the number of assaults has risen by 64% in Young Offenders Institutions in the UK. The declining safety of young people is not just limited to sites of incarceration.
In 2020 the teenager, referred to as Child Q, was strip-searched by female Metropolitan police officers after she was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis at her east London school. Her mother was not given the opportunity to be present during the strip-search. This was not an isolated case. 650 strip-searches of children were conducted between 2018-2020, almost a quarter took place without an appropriate adult present. More than half of those searched were Black boys.
Young Black men and boys are also disproportionately convicted under Joint Enterprise, a common law where an individual can be jointly convicted of the crime of another.
We invite you to consider the experiences of the young people in these powerful photographs and ask what can you do to turn the tide of Juvenile In Justice.
“ We have to recognise that incarceration of youth per se is toxic, so we need to reduce incarceration of young people to the very small dangerous few. And we’ve got to recognise that if we lock up a lot of kids, it’s going to increase crime.”
(Dr Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, University of California, Berkeley, Juvenile In Justice)
STARFISH
An old man who goes for a walk on the beach when the beach was littered with starfish washed ashore.
From a distance, he spotted a boy picking up starfish and throwing them back into the sea.
The boy told the old man “if they were left on the beach, they would die when the sun got high.”
To this the old man replied: “But here are so many you won’t make much difference!”
The boy picked another starfish and threw it back into the sea. He declared: “But I made a difference to that one!”
I read this story to my grandchildren. They understand that you might be able to care for a helpless animal or person…
But, when I relate the same story to my peers, they respond “Good luck with that.” Some people think my work is very quixotic, like the boy tossing starfish back into the sea.
My interest in this work began almost twenty years past meeting young immigrant detainees in El Paso Texas. The boys’ lives were full of privation, fear, abuse and violence… a series of events people in the field call “ACES,” or Adverse Childhood Experiences. Few people had interest, and fewer had energy to gain access and the patience to listen to these kids.
Over the years I photographed, and I listened. The “kids” were ages 7 to 70. Some older people had been convicted for juvenile offences and spent decades in prison. As the work was amassing, I realised the data told a specific story critical to understanding the disaster of mass incarceration in the U.S. But data exists in a cold fluorescent light yearning for the anecdote, the image, the voice. Together those elements build empathy and a compelling case to treat these kids more humanely.
How do you do this when it is the poorer neighbourhoods littered with these kids? My method begins with asking institutions with whatever credentials I have that might elicit a positive response. Often it is a repeated entreaty to an administrator, a legislator, or a judge. Then, as I enter a facility, I knock on the door of a cell, ask for permission to talk to the young person in the cell, take off my shoes at the door and sit on the floor. That gives them the visual dominance in the situation. I am not a white man towering and demanding directions --- I am an older man sitting subordinate on the floor allowing the child relative agency and audience. My role is to be a conduit for their voices.
Afterward I give the pictures and audio interviews to non-profits who are working on solutions other than incarceration for these young people, offering resources for the child, community, and neighbourhood to allow a more positive outcome. It is a complex weave of putting the right material into the hands of those skilled in law and legislation. Data explains the sheer volume of lives, who they are, what income, education level, family history and the overview of the issue. The images and voices reflect the frail lives that are at stake. They are real, not numbers. They are OUR kids.
These are kids that have no voice from families that have few resources in communities that have little power. The U.S. is a collection of communities and states with differing rules. The images have been shown in the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. but the real battle is within the states. Even in these days of AI, there is still the credibility of the child’s voice and image.
Art is used as a weapon for change. It is beyond the white walls of the museum to influence social policy and eventually the outcome of the lives of children. If your passion is environmental change, LGBTQ, immigration, there is a choice to turn from “nothing can be done” to “I’m going to try.” You don’t get rich, but it is easier to sleep at night. And my work has made at least some impact on a blighted system. It has given voice to kids sentenced to die in prison.
In England, I was able to work at the Swinfen Hall Young Offenders Institution in 2023, and I met a dozen people incarcerated there. There are similarities and differences between the U.S. and England. The language here changes a bit from that in America. Replace “Youth” with “Lads,” “Parole” with “License,” and immigrant with “Roma, Traveler or Gypsy”– all terms that the lads used to selfdescribe themselves. The lads wear much of their own clothing, retaining their identity – a departure from the American orange jumpsuit. But like young men in the U.S., there is a commonality of being left out of the mainstream of population and a lack of resources in the neighbourhoods they populate. Some incarcerated youth are even deported back to home countries where many may not have seen since infants.
What is required in both societies is the political will to put resources into communities to lift the blanket of poverty–resources to help families nurture children with sports, arts, music; schools that don’t throw kids with behaviour issues out but ask them why; and counsellors and teachers that care.
Many of these images bear witness to conditions that are wrong with the American system. Created over a span of pushing two decades, my work is the result of sitting on thousands of floors and recording hours of interviews. It is never easy. It is punishing but incredibly rewarding.
This body of work is a suggestion that there may be better ways to treat each other. Yes, these children may be accused of doing some terrible acts. Perhaps we can ask why these youth commit these crimes. Perhaps we can muster the social and political will to remove the causes of these actions and help all our children to not only survive, but to thrive.
Perhaps each of us can make a difference to these kids, each “starfish.” (Richard Ross, 2024)
On an average day in 2020, around 261,200 children were in custody globally.
(Global Prison Trends 2020, Prison Reform International)
Types of Youth Offending Institutions in the USA
Long Term Secure Facilities:
Long-term secure facilities (also called reformatories, training schools, and juvenile correctional facilities) provide strict confinement. Some have external gates, fences, or walls with razor wire where children wear orange jumpsuits, rubber shoes and handcuffs. They live in cellblocks, get limited contact with their families and are at high risk of sexual and physical abuse.
Juvenile Detention Centre:
These types of centres normally replicate an adult prison with limited resources. According to Prison Policy Initiative, two-thirds of confined youth are held in the most restrictive facilities. There are 625 in the USA.
Residential Treatment Centres:
Residential treatment centres are facilities that focus on providing individually planned treatment programs for youth, such as substance abuse, mental health, or sex offender treatment.
These are just a few of the institutions in the USA that are used to tackle youth crime. Others include youth commissions, academies, group homes, shelters, reception/diagnostic centres, boot camps, and wilderness camps.
We confine and often demonize a group of kids who have been abused and violated by the very people who should be protecting and loving them. Something has gone terribly wrong.
(Richard Ross, Girls In Justice)
Types of Youth Offending Institutions in the UK
Young Offenders Institution (YOI):
Secure accommodation where children and young adults aged 15 to 21 are placed if they are in custody. These are places of incarceration rather than rehabilitation and care. Incarcerated young people undertake 25 hours of education a week. There are five in the UK, and closely resemble adult prisons. In 2020/21 73% of all incarcerated children were held in young offenders institutions.
Secure Training Centres:
Purpose-built establishments designed to house 60 to 80 young people aged between 12 and 17 and characterised by childcare rather than a custodial ethos. They are designed to accommodate children who are too vulnerable for young offenders institutions. They are managed by the Ministry of Education as opposed to the Ministry of Justice. Two of the three secure training centres in England and Wales have closed following serious and widespread concerns about the care and safety of children held there. The third is under an improvement plan following a critical inspection.
Secure Children’s Home:
A type of secure accommodation for children and young people to live in if they are in custody. Secure children’s homes are for children aged 10 to 17 who are considered the most vulnerable. There are eight in the UK.
In
the UK the Ministry of Justice has concluded that, as of the end of 2022, current youth custody provision is inadequate for vulnerable children’s needs.
(The Ministry of Justice, Thirteenth Report of Session 2022-23: Secure Training Centres and Schools)
In 2020 in the United States Black youths were 2.3 times more likely to be arrested as white youths.
(Liz Ryan, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2023)
This is my third burglary charge. I’m not involved with any gangs. I was stealing to help with the family money problems. My parents have health issues. My dad has congestive heart failure and my mom had a stroke a couple of years ago. They sat at home and can’t work.
T. T., age 16.
Words of compassion offered for young people, by young people in Nottingham and Swinfen Hall Young Offenders Institution.
Just keep dancing.
Your light will never die even in your darkest hour.
Don’t let the system bring you down.
You’ll never lose yourself or your power.
Every day is a new day.
Look through the window! There is light beyond pane and pain.
You can’t ignore us.
Be determined to change.
You will see better times.
Look forward not backwards.
There is somebody watching over you. They are looking out for you, not looking at you.
You are not your crime.
Stop tolerating, start questioning.
You can be whoever you want to be.
Your current situation is not your nal destination. Robbed of youth.
Of children in custody in the United Kingdom 49% are from Black, Asian or minority background, 25% self-report as Muslim, 6% self-report as from a traveller background.
(Prison: the facts Bromley Briefings Summer 2023, Prison Reform Trust Report)
My dad and nephews visit. I have no contact with my mom, who is on the streets. I have been here 15 months. I’m in for having 2 firearms. My 22-year-old sister got me into being a Muslim. I try to follow my religion but there are some things I can’t do. Everybody is not perfect.
P. (Muslim name adopted), aged 18.
The idea of juvenile crime as a pervasive disease, slowly infecting and weakening society, is one that has long been present in the media.
SEASONED CRIMINALS OUT OF CONTROL SOCIAL EVIL VICIOUS BABY-FACED KNIFE THUGS
How might we shift this perception?
Use the space below to write your thoughts or share them using #NJMIdeas
History of Juvenile Offending
1700s
From 1750 onwards people from all over the country flocked to large cities. Poverty ran rampant pushing the population to their limits, and combined with living in such close quarters, more and more people found opportunities for crime.
No institutions designed to tackle the growing increase of juvenile delinquency existed. Various charitable institutions acted as preventative measures; workhouses and Houses of Refuge accommodated poor, friendless, and deserted children which may have included but was not limited to children who had committed crime.
1788
A small group of men concerned about the number of homeless children who earned a living begging or stealing on the streets of London met in St Paul’s Coffee House. These children would either die of natural causes or fall foul of the law; either way their future was bleak. As a result of the meeting the men got the backing of the Duke of Leeds and set up The Philanthropic Society. Their aim was to aid the reformation of boys who had been engaged in criminal activities.
Two-thirds of males and three-quarters of females in the American juvenile justice system meet the criteria for one or more psychiatric disorders.
(Richard Ross, Juvenile In Justice)
History of Juvenile Offending
House of Refuge, 1825
The first house of refuge established to detain criminal children opened in New York in 1825. Up until this point, children had been held in adult prisons. It wasn’t long however before conditions deteriorated and the American houses of refuge began to resemble adult prisons as they became repressive and punitive.
The call for change reformers in the US found fault with treating criminal children more or less the same as criminal adults. The solution was the reform school, also known as an industrial or training school. These institutions were designed to be rehabilitative rather than punitive.
House of Discipline, 1825
The first reformatory school for girls was established in England by prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. The school aimed to procure the reformation of girls between the ages of 7 and 13 who were guilty of theft or whose character was perceived as doomed.
The rate of suicide in boys aged 15-17 in the UK who have been sentenced and remanded in custody is 18 times higher than the rate of suicide in boys in the general population.
(Association for Young People’s Health, 2021)
The majority of girls in correctional settings have experienced physical and sexual abuse, and nearly 4 out of 5 run away from home. Most report their arrest was for running away from home or larceny-theft.
(Richard Ross, Girls In Justice)
I was brought in for truancy. I was truant for 3 weeks. I ran away with my friend. My mom didn’t like my friend. He is older. My dad is not really around. This is the second time I was brought in as an ARY (at-risk youth). My mom decided I’m at risk.
J. C., age 16.
History of Juvenile Offending
1850s
The Reformatory School Act was passed in 1854 in Britain, inspired by the reform schools of the United States. The subsequently established institutions implemented programmes designed around reform rather than punishment and retribution. Juveniles housed underwent military drills, physical exercise, labour, industrial and agricultural training, and instruction on morality and religion. The stigmatising term ‘criminal’ was dropped in favour of ‘delinquent’.
Early 1900s
The borstal system evolved from a gap in the provision of reformatory schools for young people aged 16 to 21. The first of these institutions opened in Borstal, Kent in 1902 from which the system got its name. Borstals were institutions that housed young people aged 16 to 21 designed to reshape them into productive citizens. They were very similar to reformatory schools in the training and activities they offered but were a step forward in prison reform due to their focus on the individual children and a philosophy that can be described as ‘child first, offender second.’
‘ Child first, offender second’ (Haines and Drakeford, 1998)
In
2020-2021, 329 self-harm incidents resulted in injury and 59 resulted in hospitalisation of young people in custody in the UK.
(Ministry of Justice, Safety in the Children and Young People Secure Estate: Update to June 2021, 2021)
A female juvenile with scars from cutting herself that read “Fuck Me”. Washoe County Detention Facility.
History of Juvenile Offending
A Lost Hope Over Time
The philosophy of the borstal system became harder to maintain especially in the wake of World War II and the rise in juvenile crime. Eventually, borstals began to resemble adult prisons despite the hope for juvenile justice they had once offered, and the system was abolished in 1982.
The Criminal Justice Act 1982
This Act merged youth imprisonment and borstals into Youth Custody Centres for under 21s which then became Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) in 1988 for young people aged 15-21. YOIs have been in use ever since and two additional youth institutions have been developed to house children of varying levels of vulnerability; secure training centres and secure children’s home.
There is an increased risk for physical and psychological harm by confining young people, cutting them off from their families, disrupting their education, and exposing them to further trauma and violence.
(The State of America’s Children, Children’s Defence Fund, 2023)
Glossary
Juvenile: A young person below the age at which ordinary criminal prosecution is possible.
Felony: A serious crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year. In the UK these are commonly referred to as indictable offences and result in severe punishments such as fines, probation, and imprisonment. The term felony includes crimes such as murder, rape, burglary, and drug trafficking.
Misdemeanour: In the US, a misdemeanour is any offence other than a felony. In the UK these are known as summary offences such as minor theft, public order offences, minor assault, and driving offences. They usually result in fines, community service orders, or short periods of imprisonment.
Probation: Serving sentence under supervision in the community rather than in custody. Failure to abide by the conditions of probation may lead to further charges and/or detention.
Parole: Refers to the court-ordered community supervision of individuals who have been released from prison before the end of their original sentence.
A very special thank you to:
With love and gratitude to all the young people who contributed to this poignant project. To our project partners for their input and support. To Richard Ross for giving us the opportunity to share these powerful photographs and the lived experiences of young people housed in detention centres in the US. We appreciate you all.
Richard Ross
Breaking Barriers Building Bridges
HMP YOI Swinfen Hall
Novus
Hannah McCullough
Will Moran
Dan Ewers
A co-produced exhibition with the Creative Programme team Sarah Gotheridge, Bev Baker, Andrea Hadley-Johnson and Aimee Wilkinson
Design: Flyte Design
Print: Belmont Press
This exhibition has been made possible by the generous funding from Arts Council England.
