Joshua* was 17 when he was arrested. He is autistic and had threatened two carers who lived with him in a flat provided by Suffolk County Council. Despite his age, the Crown Prosecution Service wanted Joshua sentenced to three and a half years in an adult prison, but the judge used his discretion and tried him in a youth court. He was sentenced on Thursday 13 June to six months in youth custody and ordered to pay a £30 victim surcharge.
Joshua’s life so far has been marked by the state consistently denying him the support to which he has been entitled. His experiences are far from unique. In England and Wales alone nearly 1,000 children are, like Joshua, in custody (or immigration detention). Some 125,000 children are, as he was, officially homeless, in temporary accommodation or on the streets. Brutal restraints are being used on children in prisons, special educational needs schools and within the NHS. Nearly 50,000 children have been taken off rolls by schools and the government does not know why. Suffering, appalling inequality, and injustice have become part of the fabric of childhood in this country.
Did those who are now homeless or locked up have mental health problems like Joshua? Were they ‘looked after’ children —the euphemism for being taken into care and the custody of the state? How do race and ethnicity shape their lives at a time when a child is racially abused every hour in the UK? And what if you live, as Joshua did, in one of the deeply deprived areas which dot the serene upper middle-class face of the home counties?
