"Budgetary reductions have worsened prison conditions. Many vulnerable children and young adults are sent to impoverished regimes, which cannot cater their specific needs," Ayesha Carmouche, policy and parliamentary officer with the charity INQUEST told Sputnik.
Carmouche added that some investigative bodies, including the HM Inspectorate, commented on the long lock-up hours and the rise of both prisoner-to-prisoner and staff-to-prisoner assaults and linked these to unmanageable prison conditions due to reduced staff capacity.
Earlier this week, a study published by INQUEST found that three children under the age of 18 and 62 young people aged between 18 and 24-years-old had died in prison over a four-year period.
Their report, "Stolen Lives and Missed opportunities: The deaths of young adults and children in prison," concludes that correctional facilities have failed to learn lessons from prior deaths in custody and that unless significant changes are made more deaths will occur in future.
"INQUEST's report argues that we need to consider the impact of the whole prison experience on young age groups. Young prisoners have a range of complex needs and vulnerabilities, including poor mental health, histories of self-harm and drug and alcohol misuse, which are exacerbated by the dehumanizing and punitive nature of imprisonment," Carmouche said.
On Wednesday, Jane Parsons, spokeswoman for HM Inspectorate of Prisons, the body responsible for monitoring prison standards, told Sputnik that her organization was powerless to force prison regimes to change in order to reduce unnecessary deaths in custody.
But Carmouche said the issue of deaths in custody went beyond the remit of the Inspectorate and a wider approach was needed to tackle the reasons why young people and children end up in custody in the first place.
"Young prisoners are being failed by a range of factors, which extend beyond the prison inspectorate"s remit. The main problem is that vulnerable groups are not supported at an early age, prior to custody," Carmouche told Sputnik.
Carmouche added that many of the young prisoners who died came from some of the most disadvantaged groups in our society. 30 percent of those who died in prisons were care leavers or had suffered some kind of family breakdown; 70 per cent had mental health issues; and nearly half had previously self-harmed.
She stressed that such individuals should have been diverted away from the criminal justice system and been given access to community support services, which could better deal with their needs.
