Enter a primary school playground and you are bound to encounter human aeroplanes with outstretched limbs taking their pilots sky high; child-sized spinning tops with wild hair and scuffed shoes; and the classic caped crusader, free at last of zips, toggles and Velcro. Finding a safe space to stand, you may spy a few dishevelled children propping up walls, alone, and others with hands clasped to adult protectors. There will always be uncomfortable sights, but the prevailing atmosphere of a children’s play area is happy and inviting. Go into a child prison and you will find miserable, frightened children making desperate attempts to hide their frailty. This is not about the different demeanours of those inhabiting the early years and adolescence. It is prison – an utterly perverse setting in which to find the young. Whenever I was escorted on to a wing for visits with a former child in care (p xiii), the experience felt like entering a building after someone – everyone – had been given devastating news.

Ryan Clark was found hanging in his cell in Wetherby young offender institution in April 2011. One of his older brothers said at the subsequent inquest that Ryan was ‘scared to death’ about being imprisoned. This was a child who had been in care since he was a toddler, and was now in custody for the first time. He was right to be afraid. During my research for this book, youth justice expert Pam Hibbert told me about a boy she had interviewed in prison who, unusually, had previously lived in a boarding school. For him, being admitted to prison:

In his memoir on life inside, ex-prisoner Erwin James explains that there is ‘a frightening precariousness to prison life’ and runs through an exhausting list of peer cruelty: