WHERE WERE ANDY BURNHAM & DAVID NICHOLSON? (Ans: On the ladder to success)
Frances Crooke of the Howard League for Penal Reform.

This is HLPR director Frances Crooke’s damning indictment of Staffordshire County Council:

‘We sent a child protection referral to Staffordshire county council [in 2007] following the chief inspector’s report into forcible strip searching and videoing of a child in Werrington prison. I got a reply. (Well done, Frances – you’re way ahead of the rest of us)

‘Apparently the council doesn’t think it has to bother to investigate properly because the threshold of harm has not been crossed. Forcibly stripping a child is, according the child protection experts in Staffordshire, a legal and proportionate response. We can all rest happy that the child did not, I am comfortingly told, sustain any physical injuries. There is no discussion about whether he was traumatised, or felt that he had been assaulted or even sexually assaulted.

‘The letter says that the strip searching of children in prison is compliant with Prison Service Standards. So, as long as the Prison Service sets its own rules and abides by them, they can do what they like. It appears that normal child protection can be blithely ignored by children’s services.’

Three years on, the arrogant unwillingness to talk to outsiders and release documents to ombudspersons remains firmly intact.

This is a perfect lab-test-case of where Cool New Labour Britannia is going, Andrew Lansley. Where are you in the media on this?