The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Nestled behind the suburban houses of the cul-de-sac I grew up on was an institution for Britain's toughest young criminals: Glenthorne Youth Treatment Centre. The building was one of only two youth prisons in Britain and held boys and girls aged 10 to 18 convicted of serious crimes — rape, murder, arson, and believing Blur was better than Oasis. It was "Britain's toughest jail for young offenders" according to The Mirror (an article from 23 April 1994).

You could see the prison's tall walls behind the houses. The walls were dark red brick. Surrounding the walls ran a 17-foot (possibly electric??) chainlink fence. I never questioned what the wall and fence were for. It was just a normal part of growing up in Erdington. I think my parents were ashamed of living next door to a prison because they never told me what the building was.

I was about ten years old when curiosity lead me to question the purpose of the looming wall and high fence at the edge of our neighborhood.

"What's that wall for, Dad?" I asked.

He paused before replying, his face clouding slightly. "It's a children's prison," he said, with a hint of discomfort in his voice.

It was an "ah-hah" moment! Now the wall made sense. Why else would there be giant wall if not to keep prisoners from escaping?

But I didn't really care one way or another. I accepted it and went inside to play Sonic on my Mega Drive. The prison never affected our lives. I never heard any screaming, catcalls, or the sound of prisoners sharpening their knives. All I saw was the wall, peeking out from behind the neighbours' houses.

Sometimes, prisoners who behaved well were let out on day release. They walked among us. I was three years old when one of these prisoners walked into a local shop and stabbed a shopkeeper, a woman called Mary Kelly. He then threw the knife away and walked back to prison. At the time I was probably on my mom's lap watching Sesame Street so I didn't hear about it until several years later.

The only time the prison broke through to my own reality was when one day, my dad yelled at me to get outside quick because "something amazing is happening!"

I ran outside. My family and a small crowd of neighbours were gathered on the street, all of them staring up at the prison wall. "GO ON, JUMP!" shouted my dad. The neighbours giggled nervously. I followed their gaze and saw two teenage boys standing precariously on top of the prison wall. Their faces looked uncertain, maybe even scared. They somehow scaled the wall but now had nowhere else to go. It was a 20-foot drop on the either side.

My six-year-old brother disappeared into the house and returned moments later wearing a plastic police badge and clutching a plastic toy gun. A normal six-year-old might’ve been terrified by escaped convicts on the loose, but not my brother. He pointed his plastic gun at the two youths and shouted "Stop right there or I'll shoot ya! I said stop! BANG BANG!"

Then he unhooked a little plastic radio from his trousers and started barking orders into it as if it were a real working police radio. "I need backup! Bad guy has escape from prison! Send me the army and SEND ME THE FIGHTER JETS!"

I don't know what the escaped convicts thought when they saw my six-year-old brother making "pew pew" noises with his toy gun and demanding military support over his plastic radio.

Meanwhile, my dad, an adult, was shouting "JUMP!"

They were just two scared teenage boys standing on top of a precarious tall wall.

"FUCK OFF!" shouted one of the youths, with terror in his voice.

"GO ON, JUMP YOU LITTLE BASTARD!" shouted my dad. He was loving it.

"FUCK YOU!" shouted back the youth.

"JUMP! GO ON, DO IT!" cried my dad.

We could hear the calm and reassuring voice of a warden trying to talk the inmates down: "You need to come down from there. It's dangerous and you could fall."

Contradicting this advice was my dad who kept shouting things like "JUMP YOU FUCKERS!" He genuinely wanted to see two teenage delinquents jump from a 20-foot wall and break their arms and legs. I wonder how many other dads would get enjoyment out of cojoling two scared teenagers, who weren't much older than boys, into jumping off a wall and potentially breaking their bones.

But after a lot of cajoling from the prison staff, the prisoners reluctantly climbed back down the wall and returned to their cells, presumably with a heavy heart and even heavier chains.

But my dad was the most disappointed of all. He couldn't hide his disgust at the anticlimactic ending. He went back inside to watch Coronation Street instead.

The prison closed in 2002 because of the danger to the community. It's now a psychiatric hospital.