ABSTRACT
By their very nature, prisons, particularly those that contain children or young people, evoke powerful emotions in both those held within them and the public at large. Despite the dismally high rates of reconviction for adolescents leaving prison, custody remains a popular disposal for the British Courts, resulting in the UK having one of the highest rates of imprisonment per capita population in Europe. The large size of this population, combined with its high level of risk factors for mental disorder and the shortfall in psychiatric resources for this population outside of prison, inevitably results in prisons acting as reservoirs of mental disorder.
