18 April 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

‘A true horror story’: The abuse of teenage boys in a detention centre

originally by: The Guardian
published: 13 April 2012

“My name’s Kevin Raymond Young and I’m 52 years old.” There’s something desperate about the way Young says it, as if he’s clinging to the wreckage of his identity. Young was 17 when he was sent to Medomsley detention centre in County Durham. He’d already had a tough life – taken into care at two, sexually and physically abused by those who were meant to look after him – but this was something different. As soon as he starts to tell his story, he’s in tears.

His experience of Medomsley in 1977 has shaped, or disfigured, his life ever since. He was convicted of receiving stolen property – a watch his brother had given him; the first he had owned. The police asked if he knew where it had come from. No, he said. Could it possibly have been stolen, they asked. He thought about it – well, yes, possibly. He was sentenced to three months’ detention.

26 March 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Committee passes death penalty repeal bill

originally by: The Day
published: 22nd March 2012

A bill that would abolish the state’s death penalty for all future cases and replace the punishment with life imprisonment has passed its first round of votes in the General Assembly despite a recent poll’s findings that repeal is unpopular with a majority of voters. Members of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee voted 24-19 in favor of the bill on Wednesday. Now, the vote awaits further legislative action by the state’s Senate.

The vote on the bill came shortly after a new Quinnipiac University poll showed 62 percent of Connecticut residents do not support repealing the death penalty.

22 February 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Feeling passionately about custody deaths

provided by: Tippa Naphtali
first published: 1st November 2008

Hundreds of people have died in custody in Britain over the last 30+ years. A disproportionate number of these were African-Caribbean men. Between 1969 and 1999 over one thousand people died in police custody alone, not counting deaths in prison and psychiatric institutions. No one has ever been convicted for any of these deaths.

See a recent series of insightful reports by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Click Here >

TBIJ is a not-for-profit organisation based at City University, London, that bolsters original journalism by producing high-quality investigations for press and broadcast media.

United Families and Friends Campaign, London – pictures >