Did you know that in Scotland children as young as 14 can be locked up in police cells? Did you know that children can be held in prisons until a place of safety can be found? Scotland’s chief inspector of constabulary knows and he doesn’t much like it. In a recent report he criticised the high number of children held in police cells in the Lothian and Borders area. There is, it seems, a terrifying trend towards demonising young people. Clear them off the streets. Lock them up.
One of the most extreme examples was the Hamilton curfew – or Child Safety Initiative, as it officially, and rather coyly, was called – imposed in Lanarkshire. This was a supposedly brilliant idea: stop the kids hanging out on street corners. Never mind that there was nothing else for them to do. The evangelical zeal that met the introduction of the curfew in 1997 almost beggared belief. Henry McLeish, at that time a minister at the Scottish Office and now minister for enterprise and lifelong learning in the Scottish executive, welcomed it with these words: “The dusk-till-dawn scheme will mean that people in the streets who are going to create mischief will be dealt with. It is also a measure that will protect vulnerable young people. This is an interesting step forward by the Hamilton police and is something I want to encourage.”
Content from our partners
