The government has been warned that thousands of children are being put behind bars for very minor offences and yet social services are being drastically cut.
At the same time as The Centre For Social Justice has revealed this dreadful situation, Ken Clarke is being asked, following the lead of Belgium, to send British prisoners to foreign jails in Poland or other eastern European countries, due to the severe overcrowding in our penal system.
Senior police officers have stated, in the report published today by the CSJ, that thousands of children are now behind bars for such minor offences as fighting in the school playground.
The current overcrowding in British prisons partly arises from the increase in the average sentence for similar offences from 5.3 months to 10.4 months as a result of the unrest in 2011.