In one of London’s most dangerous areas, being in the wrong place at the wrong time can be deadly
“Jaden” was stabbed a couple of weeks ago while walking the streets of Croydon, south London.
Luckily for him, it wasn’t serious. But a week later, he was arrested for carrying a knife of his own.
When we meet him, he tells us he is appearing before the magistrates in the morning.
The thing is, Jaden – which is not his real name – is only 13 years-old.
He seems a quiet boy, dressed in black tracksuit bottoms and wearing a dark coat with the hood pulled up over his head.
A bag is slung over one shoulder and he is constantly looking down at his phone.
We ask about the stabbing. What happened?
He pauses for a moment, then says: “Wrong place, wrong time.”
Welcome to Croydon, one of the most dangerous boroughs in the capital for a child to grow up in. Where “wrong place, wrong time” can be a lethal combination.
It is where local services have been decimated. The local council has declared that it is effectively bankrupt.
And it is where children carry knifes.
Community worker James Watkins
There is another huge issue affecting Jaden’s life. He has not been to school at all this year, and that is putting him in huge danger, says James Watkins, a community worker.
“I think a lot of the older gang members target young people who have stopped going to school because they see them as vulnerable,” he explains.
“Sometimes young people just need to feel like they belong and because they’ve been kicked out of school they feel almost cast out of society and they can become easy targets.”
Nearly half of all children in Croydon who are excluded from school are black. And official figures show that excluded children rarely return to mainstream school. They are cast out to the fringes of an already overstretched education system.
Like most excluded kids, Jaden ended up in a pupil referral unit (PRU) – a segregated school for youngsters for whom no mainstream school can be found. He has been excluded from two PRUs.
This group of children run the risk of disappearing from the system altogether, and are often called “ghost children”.
But demand for PRU is high and places are often hard to come by, according to Nicola Peters, from the Project for Youth Empowerment.
“The situation is just getting worse by the day and I don’t see it getting any better. Demand is skyrocketing and the numbers of children being excluded keeps going up and up.
“There are pupil referral units popping up all over the place and we cannot accommodate all of the children who are being excluded.
“The education system for these kids is collapsing. For a lot of them, school is old and out of date and no longer supports their needs.”
Read more:
Thousands are missing school
The ‘ghost children’ crisis explained
Absence in schools is now at crisis point
The number of children regularly absent from school is double what it was before the pandemic.
Reports of an increase in anxiety among youngsters is also putting pressure on schools.
But there is also some evidence to suggest that there has been a “seismic” shift in parental attitudes towards school attendance.
A report, compiled by the public policy research agency Public First, draws on focus group conversations with parents from different backgrounds across the country, which shed some light on why children are not always in lessons.
A mother of two primary school children from Manchester told the report’s authors: “Pre-COVID, I was very much about getting the kids into school, you know, attendance was a big thing. Education was a major thing.
“After COVID, I’m not gonna lie to you, my take on attendance and absence now is like I don’t really care anymore. Life’s too short.”
But the bigger picture shows a lack of progress by government to tackle the problem.
A recent report by the Education Select Committee, made up of cross-party MPs, was critical of the government’s response to this crisis – saying there had been “no significant improvement in the speed” of reducing the absence numbers to pre-pandemic levels.
Andy Cook chief executive of the Centre for Social Justice
Andy Cook, chief executive of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a centre-right think tank, says the crisis could have far reaching consequences for society.
“You go into any prison and you talk to the people there, 90% of them say they missed a lot of school on a regular basis. So we need to take this seriously.”
The CSJ says up to 9,000 more young offenders, including 2,000 violent criminals, could be on Britain’s streets by 2027 because of a rise in school absence, according to calculations based on official studies.
“We are storing up ourselves a load of problems,” Mr Cook warned.
“This issue is the whole ball game. It’s the ticking time bomb that’s already gone off. It is the most urgent thing facing us.”
UK
More prisoners are being transferred to less secure jails to tackle overcrowding crisis, Sky News understands
The prison service is starting to recategorise the security risk of offenders to ease capacity pressures, Sky News understands.
It involves lowering or reconsidering the threshold of certain offenders to move them from the closed prison estate (category A to C) to the open estate (category D) because there are more free cell spaces there.
Examples of this could include discounting adjudications – formal hearings when a prisoner is accused of breaking the rules – for certain offenders, so they don’t act as official reasons not to transport them to a lower-security jail.
Prisoners are also categorised according to an Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) status. There are different levels – basic, standard and enhanced – based on how they keep to the rules or display a commitment to rehabilitation.
Usually ‘enhanced’ prisoners take part in meaningful activity – employment and training – making them eligible among other factors, to be transferred to the open estate.
Insiders suggest this system in England and Wales is being rejigged so that greater numbers of ‘standard’ prisoners can transfer, whereas before it would more typically be those with ‘enhanced’ status.
Open prisons have minimal security and allow eligible prisoners to spend time on day release away from the prison on license conditions to carry out work or education.
The aim is to help reintegrate them back into society once they leave. As offenders near the end of their sentence, they are housed in open prisons.
Many of those released as part of the early release scheme in October after serving 40% of their sentence were freed from open prisons.
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Overcrowding in UK prisons
They were the second tranche of offenders freed as part of this scheme, and had been sentenced to five years or more.
Despite early release measures, prisons are still battling a chronic overcrowding crisis. The male estate is almost full, operating at around 97% capacity.
Read more from Sky News:
Find out what it’s really like inside prison?
Prison recalls soar as justice system struggles
Campaigners demand IPP sentences are scrapped
Sky News understands there continue to be particular pinch points across the country.
Southwest England struggled over the weekend with three space-related ‘lockouts’ – which means prisoners are held in police suites or transferred to other jails because there is no space.
One inmate is believed to have been transported from Exeter to Cardiff.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The new government inherited a prison system on the point of collapse. We took the necessary action to stop our prisons from overflowing and to protect the public.
“This is not a new scheme. Only less-serious offenders who meet a strict criteria are eligible, and the Prison Service can exclude anyone who can’t be managed safely in a category D prison.”
UK
Prisoner driven to psychosis after stealing mobile phone unable to undergo health test ‘due to lack of staff’
A prisoner who has served 12 years in jail for stealing a mobile phone was unable to attend a psychiatric assessment because of a lack of staff, his family claims.
According to psychiatrists, Thomas White has developed psychosis as a direct result of being handed a controversial indefinite jail term called imprisonment for public protection (IPP), which was abolished in 2012.
His sister has been campaigning for over a year to have him transferred to a hospital, which would require him to receive sign-off from two separate psychiatrists.
Ms White said her brother, who experiences religious hallucinations, was placed in segregation and needed three prison staff to release him from his cell – but they were not available due to staff shortages.
Thomas White pictured with his sister Clara White and their mother Margaret at Manchester prison
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Sky News understands that Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary who introduced the IPP sentence but now campaigns for reform, has asked prisons minister Lord Timpson to investigate.
What are IPP sentences?
Thomas White, now aged 40, was one of more than 8,000 offenders who were given an IPP sentence – a type of open-ended prison sentence the courts could impose from 2005 until they were scrapped.
The sentence – which has been described as a form of “psychological torture” by human rights experts – was intended for serious violent and sexual offenders who posed a significant risk of serious harm to the public but whose crimes did not warrant a life term.
Although the government’s stated aim was public protection, concerns quickly grew that IPP sentences were being applied too broadly and catching more minor offenders, partly due to the fact that previous convictions were taken into account when determining whether someone posed a “significant risk”.
Thomas was sentenced to two years for stealing the mobile phone in a non-violent exchange back in 2012 – but because he had 16 previous convictions for theft and robberies, he was given an IPP sentence and has served 12 years.
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What is an IPP sentence?
The coalition government scrapped the sentence in 2012, but the change was not applied retrospectively, meaning 2,852 prisoners remain behind bars – including 1,227 who have never been released.
The new government is under increasing pressure to act on the IPP crisis given they were introduced by Lord Blunkett – who has since said he feels “deep regret” about the way the sentence was used.
‘My brother is being seriously failed’
In an email to Lord Blunkett, seen by Sky News, Ms White said: “My brother had a psychiatric appointment on the 1 November to see if he could be admitted to an outside hospital as he has to have two signatures to be transferred to an outside hospital.
“The system is nothing but criminal – people like my brother are being seriously failed.
“We waited a long time to have Thomas assessed again by the psychiatrist. We more than likely won’t get the assessment again.”
Read more:
11 years for stealing a mobile phone: Inside the lives of IPP prisoners
The £1bn cost of keeping people in prison on indeterminate IPP sentences
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Inside the lives of IPP prisoners
James Frith, the Labour MP for Bury North, said: “Thomas’ case highlights why these sentences were abolished over a decade ago.
“Thomas’s indefinite imprisonment has had a hugely detrimental impact on his mental and physical wellbeing. Thomas should be a patient, not a prisoner.
“We know the prison system is underfunded and overcapacity, but this is no excuse for failing Thomas. I have been working with Clara, Thomas’ sister, and I have written to the Lord Chancellor to raise Thomas’s case and the wider issues of IPPs.
“Thomas has been denied appropriate assessment and care for too long, we will not give up this fight for what is right.”
The Ministry of Justice does not comment on individual medical cases.
It is understood Lord Timpson will respond to Lord Blunkett in due course.
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