Mental health episodes and other incidents requiring treatment are ‘frighteningly common’ among children held alongside adults
government passed new legislation, with no outside scrutiny, to suspend its own Human Rights Act and allow the indefinite detention of children in adult police watch houses.Children in the state have regularly been kept in watch houses for extended periods, up to 40 days, because youth prisons are full.
The toilets in the holding cells are not partitioned, meaning boys and girls can be watched by other detainees or police, via CCTV, while they are going to the toilet. She says watch houses are noisy and lack privacy. The only drinking water available is from a tap near the toilet, which children sometimes avoid due to dirt or smells.“Children … are sometimes living four to a cell, which is designed to hold only two people, meaning that they sleep on the floor instead of on the benches,” Sinclair says.
“Some girls have reported feeling frightened because adult women have made threats to them from nearby cells.”
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