Dead behind Bars

This programme contains some strong language and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

'..and within days was found hanging from a sheet tied...'

'Adam Rickwood was just 14 years of age when he was found hanged.'

In the last ten years, 80 young people aged 21 and under

have killed themselves in prison.

"This is the report of an investigation

"into the circumstances surrounding the death of Ryan Clark.

"When Ryan was found hanging in his cell,

"he was 17 years old.

"I would like to offer my sincere sympathy to Ryan's family."

"CCTV footage showed that on the day of his death,

"Jake was subjected to verbal abuse and banging on his cell door."

"15 weeks before Adam's death, another young man

"died at Brinsford, in the same cell and using the same method."

This is the story of three young men who died behind bars...

"So, Mum, if you're reading this, I'm not alive

"cos I can't cope being in prison no more."

..told by the people who knew them best.

He knows what a grass is and he knows what happens to grasses

and he knows what happens to people who go running to screws.

He didn't have the mind of the 17-year-old he were.

He had the mind of, like, a young teenager.

It reveals how they died in the care of the state.

They were bullied that much, I think he were tortured.

His mind were tortured.

And he lost his life at the end of it.

'We have systems in place to ensure we learn lessons from deaths

'in custody. That's what the Ministry of Justice has said.'

'The compelling evidence is the fact that the deaths continue to occur.

'More crucially, it is

'the pattern of deaths with worryingly familiar themes.'

Jake Hardy is one of the 80 young people who have

taken their own lives in prison in the last decade.

He died in Hindley Young Offenders Institution

when he was just 17.

Mummy's boy. That's my lad. Very handsome but still a mummy's boy.

Any trouble, he'd come running home to Mummy.

That one is a week before he went to prison.

Jake were a follower, not a leader.

If somebody said to him to do it, Jake probably would.

He couldn't tell right from wrong, really.

But that were his mental capacity.

Six foot four and a half

with a mental age of between 12 and 13 years old.

That's Jake and his sister, Samantha.

I think he were about 14 there.

That's Jake with his hair gelled back.

He were going to a Christmas party at church, I think.

If he hadn't had his tablets, he couldn't hold a limb still.

He were all giddy. We used to call it Jake doing the wall of death.

As in motor bikes going round and round and round.

That's how Jake were.

And he'd say, "Mum, I just want to be normal, Mum."

That's how he saw himself.

He wanted to be like the other lads.

And, of course, he weren't.

And he just followed their lead and got himself into trouble.

That's how it all started.

They did know in primary school there was something the matter with him.

I mean, I went to... I had to take him to a speech therapist twice

cos he couldn't finish a word off.

I had to take him to have his eyes tested

cos they thought that might be a problem.

It wasn't till he got expelled, at 12, from his senior school,

that he were diagnosed.

It were good to know that he'd got ADHD and something WERE wrong,

not just he were a naughty boy who liked to destroy everything

he put his hands on and set fire to things.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What did they diagnose him with?

ADHD and conduct disorder, dyslexia and mildly autistic.

Jake and my mum and my sister dancing in the kitchen.

DANCE MUSIC

They were always dancing, weren't they?

That were a normal day, weren't it?

-There were nobody like him.

-Nobody.

-No-one.

If he weren't out making something,

-he were taking something apart, weren't he?

-Yeah.

Or annoying me.

Normally annoying me by taking my things and breaking them.

Do you remember one time

he came racing down the road in a wheelie bin?

On top of a black bin just skidding down the road.

He did a lot of things with black bins.

He used it as a boat, didn't he, at the canal?

Yeah, bobbing down the canal in the black bin.

Abseiling out through his bedroom window.

Which, what, is 20 foot off the floor?

Jake got a four-inch piece of rope. Four-inch.

I says, "What are you doing, duck?"

He says, "Try abseiling down here, Mum."

I says, "Oh, don't do that, duck."

Not many understood him.

Like, the people he were close, close to understood him

but if you were to meet him on the street, you'd not...

You'd not, like...

He'd be one that you'd look at and you'd think, "Prick."

I mean, if he'd got a great, big scar on his head

they'd probably relate more to that

but Jake's was in his brain. His mental difficulties.

And people just looked at Jake and thought, "Normal kid.

"He's a naughty normal kid."

On the night of his 17th birthday,

Jake and his friends were involved in a fight.

Jake was charged with affray and bailed to appear in court.

Just two months later, he was in trouble again.

This girlfriend must have been special.

She were older than him, though, and he adored her.

Jake was only...

He were only 17 and he were madly in love with her. Besotted by her.

And she ended it and he went back up to see her.

And he had a...

a knife in his hand and he were going to stab himself

if she wouldn't go back with him.

And she pulled the knife out of his hand and they had a row

and she phoned the police.

He were worried about going to court and he started

mutilating himself, cutting his face with anything he could get hold of.

Clippers, nail clippers, scissors.

And cos he were already on bail for the affray,

that's why they sent him to prison.

The judge just said, "I'm sentencing you to four months." And Jake just...

His last words that day were, "Mum, Mum, help me, Mum.

"Mum, help me."

And he just walked away crying.

He were a right mess.

Yeah, right mess. Proper couldn't hold it in or anything.

Proper upset.

He did do wrong and he did need punishing, but he wasn't necessarily

forced to be sent to a normal prison cos Jake weren't normal.

He couldn't go to mainstream school.

Why did they send him to a mainstream prison?

He couldn't cope with it.

Three years before Jake, Adam Rushton killed himself

in Brinsford Young Offenders Institution.

He was 20.

Poppy. Good girl. That's a good girl.

Three days before his seventh birthday,

we picked Adam up and all his worldly goods,

which wasn't very much, and brought him home.

And so this is where he grew up.

It's where he played, where we tried to show him

there was a better way of being.

He seemed happy quickly, to be here.

We had adopted Chris about six years before and that had gone really well.

We were a very happy threesome

and adding to it just seemed like a really good idea.

So we actually got in touch with our old social worker.

She told us about a little boy.

He and his twin brothers had been taken into care because his mum

just couldn't cope with them and they were concerned for their welfare.

-I didn't know you were there.

-What are you doing?

-He's taking a picture of you and Christopher.

-Can I look through it?

-Whatever you see is what gets filmed.

-I want to look up in the sky.

All right then. Oh, my goodness.

-Bye, Dad.

-Bye, Daddy.

Can we do some more...?

This is Adam with his twin brothers before he came to live with us.

Adam, even at that very young age, we learnt, had to help

look after his baby brothers. They would be hungry.

There might be Weetabix in the house but there'd be no milk.

He would go outside and wander up and down the street

and look for somebody's milk on the doorstep.

So, we soon came to realise that, from a very early age,

the only way Adam could survive was by taking things.

And he was very busy, very active, always on the go and mischievous.

In school, he was very disruptive. He'd go to the toilet

and flood the toilets or break something in the toilet.

So he was very difficult. His behaviour was very challenging.

He would have periods of bad behaviour

most often when he'd had a particularly nice day.

You'd go to the seaside or you'd go and do something with them

and then you'd come home and his behaviour would deteriorate

and the only way we could ever really understand it or explain it

was that this child didn't think he deserved to have anything nice

or to do anything nice.

As if he believed, "I don't deserve this.

"I'm bad." He couldn't believe that he was lovable.

Like Jake, Adam was 12 years old when he was diagnosed with ADHD.

He was given a place at a special boarding school.

Tregynon Hall School was a private independent school.

It was home from home. We could see hope, yeah, in abundance.

For me, I'm not sure my husband would agree,

but me being...my mug ever half full, I was hopeful.

At 15, I was, "Yes, that's my boy.

"Going to be OK." And that was suddenly taken away from us.

He was suspended from school. We were asked to come and fetch him.

His behaviour towards another child had been aggressive

and they would never have him back.

He just wasn't allowed back to school.

He went back to feeling, "I'm just a lot of rubbish, aren't I?

"What's the point? I might as well just do what I want to do."

Soon after Adam was expelled from school,

he left home and went to live in a hostel in nearby Newtown. He was 16.

It wasn't long before he started to get into trouble with the police.

He was good at stealing.

He was good at it. And if he stole, he would be risen in the eyes

of his new friends, who were not always very savoury.

But these were people who would look up to him

because he was good at something.

Because he'd been learning it from a very young age -

how to take things to survive.

So that's what he did.

Ryan Clark was just 17 when he killed himself

in Wetherby Young Offenders Institution.

Ryan was the quiet one.

Happy-go-lucky, I called him.

He didn't cry, he didn't whinge.

Timid. Really timid.

Very, very small as well for his age.

Yeah, very small. We used to always call him little gnome.

Just tiny.

About here.

Ryan, like Adam, was taken into care at an early age.

This is what we call Ryan's table.

We light these candles at Christmas time, don't we? Birthdays.

This one's myself, Ryan, the smallest,

Gino and Karl, his brothers.

Got Ryan on there again.

We sort of made a collage of bits and bobs.

Before his ears were pinned back.

I like to live surrounded by the pictures.

Cos they weren't with me all the time, that were my safety net.

They weren't here, but they were still around me.

They were brought up in foster care cos I was unable to

look after them myself through mental health problems.

I suffer with bipolar type II.

I'm actually now in remission.

I think if I'd been diagnosed a lot of years ago,

my children would all be here.

Things would have been different.

They all went to the same foster carer.

Ryan was the main one that was stable

for most of the time.

Karl and Gino had both turned into little terrors

going to high school.

So they left that placement and I think that affected Ryan

quite a lot because he'd grown up with his two siblings

and then to suddenly be the only one, I think

that would have had a big impact on Ryan,

especially with Gino leaving, because he were close with Gino.

Ryan started to get unsettled a bit,

going and getting distraught in the house and getting a bit angry.

He kind of come out of care around about 13, 14

and just started living in hostels round Leeds, getting into crime.

I think they were desperate to belong

but I think because everybody was split up into...

Cal was in one place, Gino, another,

me another place.

I think he was torn between all of us

and then started tagging with Gino.

I think he thought Gino was the only one who sort of cared about him.

Who made this?

My little brother, Gino, who's currently back in prison.

-What's it made out of?

-Matchsticks.

If you can get a close-up through the window inside,

you'll be able to see all inside as well - matchsticks.

He made these on his three-and-a-half-year sentence.

-Is he in prison at the moment?

-He is, yeah.

Currently serving a two- or three-year sentence.

Did Ryan look up to Gino?

Yeah, he wanted to follow Gino into his footsteps.

-Do you maybe he had followed your footsteps?

-Not really.

I wish he had just followed his own footsteps and learnt his own way.

I wasn't exactly a good boy myself.

The 12 months before Ryan went to prison,

Ryan lived in the hostel, not a very nice hostel.

Starting to do street robberies with other people.

He was addicted to amphetamines by then,

cannabis, M-Cat.

Wasn't nice seeing him like that.

We should have seen it as well.

It was like him turning out and saying,

"I'm scared, I need help."

The alleged offence that Ryan was remanded for was robbing a phone

and money, I think.

He said, "I'm going to prison. They are not going to let me come home.

"They're going to remand me. They're going to remand me."

You could just tell that he wasn't looking forward to prison.

He even cried before he went to prison, saying,

"I don't want to go to prison."

"Really frightened they're going to look me up."

Ryan was remanded into custody

at Wetherby Young Offenders Institution,

which houses over 350 inmates aged between 15 and 17.

What did you think when you heard he was going to prison?

He was going to get bullied. He was definitely going to get bullied.

I knew he would get bullied because Ryan wasn't a fighter.

He was little, very slim, nothing to him.

I was quite worried about Ryan.

Our role there, we were protecting him,

seeing to his needs and such things.

Would he cope? And what would he do if he couldn't cope?

How would his emotions surface... knowing what my son was.

When Jake was sentenced to four months

at Hindley Young Offenders Institution,

it was the first time he'd ever been away from his mum, Liz.

The only present Jake ever had...

what he never destroyed.

They are like stilts.

He could run up this street within seconds with these on.

All you saw was a pair of legs going past your window.

The only thing he never destroyed.

He once said to me, "Mum, can I wash your car down?" "Yeah."

I'd got no windscreen wipers on 'em because he was making them better.

Just never thought it through to the end.

I was the only mainstay in his life

who could talk him out of what he was doing.

If somebody had upset him upstairs, he'd go and smash

his bedroom to smithereens and I mean smash everything.

I would say, "Come on, son. Tell your mam what's gone on.

"If you can't tell your mam, you can't tell anybody."

"Oh, give over, Mam. Give over."

"Now, come on."

That's how he got round it.

Cost me 300 quid, these.

The best 300 quid I've ever spent in my life for that kid.

I thought Jake would be safe, because they must cater for

some sort of mental health issues but it was horrendous from day one.

Jake had ADHD and learning disabilities, but despite his

vulnerability, he wasn't put into one of Hindley's specialist units.

They looked at Jake, assessed him as though he could handle himself.

That is written down, "Looked as though he could handle himself,"

and that's why they put him on the wing he was on...

..with the sort of people that were on that wing.

He wasn't coping at all.

They were giving him medication at the wrong time.

They were giving it to him at like 7.30.

By doing so, he wouldn't go to sleep.

So he was having no sleep and they were getting him up

just as he was going to sleep.

On the first visit, his tongue was swelled up.

It was like green and pussy

and that was a sign of him being run down.

He wasn't coping.

He was telling people, different people, how he was being bullied.

Witnesses saw how he was being bullied.

If he was on the phone to me,

there would be somebody effing and blinding in the background,

vile, nasty things

and he'd say, "There's been a fight, Mum."

I'd say, "Go back to your room. Put your head down. Get it down.

"Don't cause any trouble or owt like that."

Huh. Wrong advice.

This was like a week before he got put in prison.

He looks like a right tramp. He'd been smoking.

He was sat there and couldn't stop laughing

so thought I'd take a picture of it because I thought it was funny.

Oh, that's him as a baby. That's cute.

You see he's cute there. He doesn't look like a tramp.

Ryan had never been locked up before.

They had it down on file that he'd been to a secure placement

but he hadn't.

He'd never been to secure.

When he arrived at Wetherby, Ryan's record stated

he had been banging his head on the police cell wall.

But the prison didn't issue a self-harm warning

and he was put straight on the induction wing.

It was written down on his file three times in the first two days,

"Refer to CAMS," which is Child Mental Health Service.

And he wasn't picked up. He wasn't referred. He didn't see nobody.

They said, because he was quiet and because he said he was fine...

that it was OK and he was handling it.

I would be asking some more questions if somebody's quiet.

But five days after Ryan arrived, his behaviour changed.

He had an argument with a prison officer

and threatened to snap her jaw.

In fact, he was upset because it was Mother's Day.

He hadn't been able to make contact with his own mum and he perceived

that the officer he was talking to had slagged off his mother.

So those two things combined in his head, to make him

go over the top and behave in a very angry and unpleasant way.

His punishment was severe. He was confined to his cell for seven days.

Then he was moved straight onto a main wing.

It wasn't long before he was being bullied by other inmates.

Of course he was going to get bullied.

He was 17 when he went and it's like... He didn't look 17.

He looked 13, maybe 14.

I always remember him being this small child with spots,

and little acne face, in his tracksuit.

A skinny little guy.

When he was sentenced - remand! You know what I mean? Remand!

You shouldn't put a remand with a convict. Prisons are just ruthless.

In big man jail...

A lot more relaxed, far more relaxed.

Older men have got a wiser head

and just want to get on with their sentence, do the sentence, get out.

YOs - 15 to 18. That's...

15 to 18's a pretty rowdy age, do you know what I mean?

Constant fighting.

You're sat down, eating your dinner, you look at him

and go, "What are you looking at?"

And it's like...

If you put your head down like that,

you have just more or less said, "Come batter me."

Bullying is a big thing in jail. That's cos it's all young fellas

thinking they are hard or trying to prove a point.

He was a small, quiet kid.

He knows what a grass is and he knows what happens to grasses

and he knows what happens to people who go running to screws.

He's thought, "How else can I deal with this?"

Ryan had a relative who was also serving time at Wetherby.

He was being bullied too

and tried to hang himself in a desperate attempt to be moved

to the Keppel unit, a wing for vulnerable prisoners.

For Ryan though, the bullying wasn't over.

On 17th April, it got worse.

They'd been taunting him through the window that night,

threatening to go in the next morning and stab him.

And I think Ryan wanted to go to Keppel.

That night, after lock-up, Ryan decided to copy his relative.

That young relative, if you like, had the sense to ring the bell

before doing what he did and somebody had come.

He had been taken to hospital and he was moved to Keppel.

But when Ryan did it, he apparently called out

to those on cells either side of him,

"Ring your bell. Let's string up."

And he then, it appears... did "string up".

And that boy didn't press his bell.

The youngster told the prison, "I couldn't ring the bell because

"I was in trouble for ringing the bell before unnecessarily

"and I thought if I did it, I'd lose my television."

So nobody rang any bell at all and...

..the outcome for Ryan was that he died.

Do you think Ryan may have done what he did out here?

No. No. Not at all.

He'd have done it a long time ago if he was going to.

He's had threats before.

He must have really, really desperately wanted

to get off that wing

and really thought that something was going to happen that next day.

Love changes everything, doesn't it?

I really believed that, right through until...

Probably right up until the day he died.

I always believed, part of me,

either hoped or believed that Adam was going to come good.

At 17, Adam was living on his own, away from his parents.

We could go a few weeks without hearing from Adam.

Unfortunately, sometimes that was,

"Oh, Mum, I'm in this prison or that prison."

He was at a hostel called Ty Welyn Newtown.

The staff there knew more about Adam and what was happening to him

than we did and they were his second family. I really believe that.

That's Ty Welyn.

We all felt a lot for Adam.

We all tried very hard to help him get what he wanted out of life.

Unfortunately, we didn't sort of find the answer for Adam.

Adam was always in trouble of some sort.

Very petty crimes, generally, things like shoplifting.

Over the next few years,

Adam served over ten short prison sentences, all for minor crimes.

He would come and knock on the door and we'd have a cup of tea,

a chat and then he'd be gone for weeks

and then he'd come back again. I'd say, "Where have you been?"

He'd say, "I've been to prison." "Oh! Again!" Yeah.

So, we never knew what was going on

but I've known him since primary school.

Leading up to his final term in prison,

he kind of got in a funny way.

He had ten pills, which he was trying to sell.

He was trying to get rid of them. He couldn't get rid of them.

So he crushed them all up into a powder and was just dabbing.

His life became extremely chaotic,

worse than I've ever seen in the past.

His eyes were sunken in over the few days

because he wasn't getting sleep

and I don't imagine he was eating either.

It wasn't the Adam I recognised

because the Adam I knew, I could speak to.

This guy... was almost sitting there blank.

He stole a few phones as well, mobile phones.

He had like three at once.

And then he went out and stole another one and got caught.

The sergeant who knew Adam very well knew that he was not right

when they got him in custody.

His behaviour in the holding cell at court

was very worrying for the solicitor.

He smeared faeces all over the cell wall.

The solicitor asked for him

to be assessed by the community psychiatric nurse.

The community psychiatric nurse saw him

and although Adam maintained he was perfectly all right, had no plans

to commit suicide, the psychiatric nurse felt otherwise

and actually made that recommendation on his report -

if the magistrate sent him back to prison,

he was at risk of taking his own life.

But they still sent him back to prison.

That psychiatric report didn't go with him.

And when it was faxed to the prison the following day,

our information is that it was filed.

But nobody even read it.

Nobody joined anything up.

No-one raised any concerns about Adam's state of mind

when he arrived at Brinsford Young Offenders Institution.

He was fast-tracked through induction,

and on the second day of his sentence,

he was moved to a single cell containing bunk beds.

That evening, Adam hanged himself from the top bunk.

I'm not sure I would have predicted that,

looking at the video of him as a little boy.

Um...

Yeah.

This is Jake's perfect role.

What the fuck are you on about?

Bless him.

That luminous jumper.

Nice chips.

-That was Jake. That was our Jake, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

That was Jake on a typical day.

Being a... It's nice to watch, just because he was happy then, really.

"Hi, Samantha. I'm sorry I didn't write to you.

"You're the best sister in the world.

"I didn't mean to call you a fat bastard.

"So, Samantha, I love you so, so much. See you when I get out.

"PS, love you, Lily, Samantha and Cole."

He shouldn't have been there.

He didn't deserve to be there and get bullied.

-Was he an easy target, do you think?

-Yes.

He always got bullied, didn't he? Always.

Because he was vulnerable

because people knew that Jake was an emotional person.

But a lot of people thought, "He's a big, tough lad,

"e can take it," you know what I mean? But he couldn't.

After four weeks in prison,

Jake was back in court to answer his second charge for affray.

He was sentenced to another six months.

His youth offending officer reported that he was being

bullied at Hindley.

She requested a transfer, but Jake was sent straight back there.

My last words to him, because he was sat behind a glass panel,

were, "Don't cry, son, don't cry."

And they sent him back to Hindley.

On the Tuesday, he smashed his telly to smithereens

because of the bullying.

And he scratched all down his arm.

Jake was given more support, but despite self-harming,

he wasn't moved to Hindley's specialist unit.

Why didn't they put him on the Willow unit,

which caters for mental health, for people who are threatening

and tried to commit suicide?

24-hour care. Suicide watch.

But it wasn't deemed necessary.

Over the next couple of days, Jake's mood worsened.

He segregated himself off in his cell and didn't come out for food,

didn't come out for association, just sat in his cell all the time.

Summat kicked off on Friday and they are all crowded round his cell.

Kicking his door, calling him meth boy, throwing piss at him,

telling him he's got to go and fucking shag this young kid,

telling them they're going to fuck my mum,

they're going to fuck his girlfriend.

CCTV recorded inmates kicking

and hitting Jake's cell door with table tennis bats.

The prison officer was just sat letting it all happen,

never said, "Don't do it."

He was bullied that much, I think he was tortured.

His mind was tortured.

Nobody helped him. Nobody helped him at all.

Yet he was crying out for help.

Later that night, a prison officer saw Jake writing at his desk.

The cell light was on.

The officer returned 30 minutes later to find the cell in darkness.

He shone his torch into the cell and saw Jake hanging from the window.

Prison officers cut him down and began to resuscitate him.

"They keep giving me shit, I told the staff

"and they didn't do anything about it.

"So, Mum, if you're reading this, I'm not alive,

"cos I can't cope with it in prison no more.

"People giving me shit, even staff.

"I'm sorry cos Lily isn't even going to know her Uncle Jake.

"So, Lily, I'll always be looking over you.

"You are my baby I could never have."

It's horrible.

To think my brother had fought with something so drastic

-to try and get out and...

-Nobody listened to him,

he didn't have anyone to help him and say, "Jake, it's all right."

-Cos no-one gave a fuck, did they?

-No.

I found out at 10.45 on Friday, 20th January.

We were just going upstairs, I'd just gone in my bedroom

and was just getting undressed, putting my pyjamas on and there was a bang on the door.

Our Samantha flew downstairs to answer the door.

She said, "Mum, the police are here." I went, "They've come to the wrong house.

I put my trousers on and went downstairs and...

"Is your son in Hindley?" I went, "Yeah."

He said, "He's dead, he's just hung himself."

I said, "I beg your pardon. I think you'd better come in."

It was horrible, they were like, "Your son's tried hanging himself,

"he's done it, at the minute he is breathing."

I thought my legs were going to go from underneath me.

I couldn't believe it, to start with.

Horrible. Really horrible.

I had to scramble to my dad's and get my dad and then drove up there.

This nurse said, "Go into the family room." And I said to Gary,

"When you go in the family room, it's bad."

And then a consultant came out and told us...

..he was on a life-support machine.

There were just two prison officers sat at the end of my brother's bed,

like he was going to get up and fucking run away or something.

I just sat there watching him.

Later on that morning, they took him down for a scan

and he came back and he says,

"I thought I was going to tell you he was going to die,

"but I can see a little bit of hope, just a little bit."

That was Saturday morning.

And, er...

Sunday they should have took him...

for another scan.

But there was no hope then.

Distraught. Mum was in a bad, bad way.

And I sat and held his hand, I was on one side...

..and Gary was on the other side.

And she just turned his machine off.

He died.

"This report considers the circumstances surrounding the death

"of Mr Adam Rushton at Her Majesty's Young Offenders Institute Brinsford

"on 22nd October 2009.

"Adam was found hanging in his cell shortly after 6pm.

"He was 20 years old."

The mortuary experience was a bit surreal.

I wasn't sure what to expect - after all, Adam had hung himself

and I don't think that would be very nice.

And they said, "Well, he'll probably just seem like he's just asleep."

And he was. He was just there.

I couldn't see his neck.

And I felt quite cross with him for being such a silly boy.

And he was cold.

And that's where we said goodbye to our son.

And then we went to the prison.

They asked if we'd like to see where he died.

And I said, "No, thank you, I don't want to see where he hung himself."

And the governor said,

"Oh, you'll be very pleased to know."

"I'm going to be pleased to know what?"

"Well, Adam had hung himself from the top of a set of bunk beds

"and you'll be really pleased to know that we've now moved the bunk beds out of there...

"..as a result of Adam's death.

"We wouldn't want it to happen again," or something like that.

And then, as time went by, the run-up to the inquest,

it became apparent that another young man

had died in the same cell...

in the same way...

from the same bunk bed.

I couldn't believe it.

And not only that, it became apparent that cells used for single occupancy

should not have bunk beds in them.

And on the Monday before my son killed himself,

e-mails were going between the prison governor and the estates manager,

saying, "How much time will it take to have the bunk bed removed

"and how much will it cost?

"Should we have to do it?"

Well, it cost my son his life.

If the bunk beds had been moved, maybe he wouldn't be dead now.

It feels...

..like nobody really gives a damn, to be honest, nobody really cares.

# So young, so how were you to know?

# Know, know

# You're a carrier, a carrier

# Of the life inside of you... #

Well, a guy came down and took pictures of everybody

and graffitied him. That's Samantha.

That's Jake, you can see his face better.

-Do you spend a lot of time down here?

-All the time.

When he died, that's where they put messages for him all down here,

-and left flowers and notes.

-Yeah, all around the back of there.

-How is your mum coping with it?

-Rubbish.

-She puts on a brave face most of the time.

-She does.

-Rubbish.

She just feels like she's existing and not living.

Cos she lived for you, but because of Jake's problems,

she lived for Jake, didn't she?

And her life was looking after Jake and making sure Jake was all right

-cos you could sort yourself out, couldn't you?

-Exactly.

She needed him and he needed her.

They both kept each other going,

whereas now all she does is sits inside all the time.

It's hard to see my mum go downhill like that.

After every death in prison, an inquest is held.

Jake's is expected to last for six weeks.

There's loads and loads and loads of paperwork, mountains of the stuff.

When did it arrive?

Monday, we went out and fetched it from the post office on Monday.

There's bits and bobs coming through every day

now it's coming up closer to the inquest.

There's paperwork from the Coroner, paperwork from the solicitor,

there's paperwork from Safeguarding Children.

There's paperwork from everywhere. It's very overwhelming.

His autopsy report - how many scratches he's got on his body,

what was in his bowel.

They had to take his brain out of his body to do some tests on it.

How they undid his skull and his brain popped through it.

It's horrendous having to read things like that.

I'm stressing out about the inquest. It's frightening me.

It's overwhelming me. I don't want to be sat there...all this crying.

I want to be strong for him, but I know I won't be able to be.

I am strong.

But it's through the day.

It's at night-time,

I can't sleep at night,

and I dream about him every night.

Once it's all over and done with, I might be able to get some peace.

SIREN WAILS

The inquest into Ryan's death has been under way for several weeks.

No, can't be playing with the ball now. Go on, into bed.

The first day was the hardest day.

It was really hard being on that stand.

I was made to go through all Ryan's letters and listen to phone calls.

You feel like...

you're there giving evidence, but you're doing...

well, it feels like you're on trial - very, very hard.

'I thought, over two and a half years, I'd built myself up.

'I'd been knocked down with the death. You start to pick yourself up.

'I actually said, "I'm prepared, I'm not going to let it get me down."

"I know what to expect, I've read all the paperwork,

"I've read all the statements."

And then, I think three weeks in, boomf!

That's when it hit me.

And I had to start having days off, because I couldn't cope.

We'll have this little bit of evidence that's left

and then the coroner will start her summing up

-and will probably go on for two days.

-Yeah?

Yes, because there's an awful lot for her to say.

What's likely to happen is that the jury will come back

and give what they call a short form verdict -

suicide, accident or misadventure - and I'll explain those,

or an open verdict.

I just don't want it to come back suicide,

cos I don't believe it was suicide.

-Not full suicide.

-No.

-No.

As long as that don't come back, I'll be all right. Yeah.

I don't think the verdict should be suicide

and I know Sonya would hate it if it was.

I mean, it would be dreadful for her to feel that Ryan was so depressed

and so lacking in hope for the rest of his life

that he wanted to end it.

I think it's terribly important for Sonya not to be faced

with that kind of a conclusion.

The grief is really hard...to explain,

with me, more so, because we ended on a bad note.

I must have received about seven letters

within the space of a week and half, begging me to go and see him.

I don't visit my children in prison.

To me, if they've done wrong, they were in there for punishment.

I didn't answer a lot of his calls,

but when I did answer them, I was harsh, very.

I heard it back at the inquest, the phone call and it hurt me more

cos I felt I sounded nasty.

Just no emotion there. It was just, "Why have you done this?

"I'm not going to lie for you." Things like that.

And that's how it ended, with me and Ryan on that bad note.

That's made it worse for me because I wasn't able to tell him how I felt.

I was just angry with him and I can't change that now.

Jake's inquest started today and I'm in a hotel room,

waiting for tomorrow for me to be the first witness.

I'm happy in some ways because I want to tell the jury my son wasn't

a bad lad, he wasn't a naughty boy, he wasn't a bad lad, he was ill.

What are you not looking forward to?

They'll be all posh and they're all solicitors, they're barristers,

and I just come from a council estate in Chesterfield.

They don't know how we live, they don't know how anybody lives.

It's not something you do every day.

I should be sat at home now watching Coronation Street...

or something like that.

When my son died, I had to take his socks off...

..and these socks have been everywhere with me.

I know it sounds silly.

Pff! They still smell of him.

I take his socks everywhere with me. Wherever I go, these socks go.

'How do you think it will be like

-'over the next four to six weeks?

-Horrendous.

'People talking about Jake, people talking about what

'sort of background he came from,

'cos they'll try to blacken our names as well,

'even though we've done nothing wrong.

'He didn't die in the care of me. He died in the care of the state.'

The jury in Ryan's inquest has been sent out to consider its verdict.

Waiting now, a week today, for the verdict to come in.

Wasn't too bad last week -

I think towards the end of the week it's got worse.

I thought they'd be back by Friday, they weren't back by Friday.

I spent most of the weekend crying.

Tired, really tired.

How will you feel if it comes back suicide?

I don't think I could handle that.

That'd take longer to get over because I won't accept that.

I will not accept that it was suicide.

You don't take note, really, of suicides that go on in prison.

The public's reaction, "It's his own fault.

"Shouldn't have been in prison in the first place."

I've heard it. I've probably thought it myself before, if I'm honest.

They just look at, "Oh, it's a thug, another thug,"

but that thug, as they call it, is still a child...

..some of them have made mistakes - we all make mistakes.

Some have made more than others. They're still children.

TEXT MESSAGE ALERT

Right, it's Ruth.

"They have a verdict, but don't panic,

"they have gone for lunch whilst everything is being typed."

Hiya, they've got a verdict.

-Got a verdict.

-You have?

-Shaking.

-You're making me nervous, I'm not even going.

I'm shaking inside. I've got butterflies.

It's like you can't wait for it to come and then when it's here,

you want it to be a bit longer.

SIREN WAILS

SIREN WAILS

Oh!

-What's the verdict?

-Accidental...

..due to the bullying.

I think, I mean, I'm looking at it and just absorbing it

just as you are, but there's some really, really positive things here.

Um, missed opportunities to see how vulnerable Ryan was and then

the fact that the jury recognised this was a cry for help.

He'd never want to leave any of you or anything like that.

I knew he didn't mean to do it. I knew he didn't mean to do it.

I think... That's what I needed, somebody to agree.

Ryan was one of 11 young people who killed themselves

in young offender institutions in 2011.

One of the recommendations made to Wetherby, to prevent future deaths,

was to improve mental health assessments,

another was to challenge bullying more effectively.

When I was told its recommendations, I was quite angry,

because I was told that even if they do just one recommendation

out of six, they've made a change...

..but how many inquests has there been now

for deaths in children's prisons, all recommendations,

it's still happening.

It's still happening.

It took us a long time to choose the right spot.

That's all that's left of my poor lad.

You get all these inquests, reports and it's supposed to explain

what happened, but I'm not sure it does, really. Maybe nothing can.

SHE SNIFFS

It shouldn't have happened.

He should still be here, causing havoc and mayhem...

..but he isn't, so...

When I used to visit prison, I would look around the room

and I would see 30 or 40 Adams, all with the same look in their eyes,

all with the same expressions on their faces

and, yeah, they deserve to be punished, but...

..there should be something a bit more for them.

The inquest into Jake Hardy's death

in Hindley Young Offenders Institution

has just finished after six weeks.

SHE SIGHS

"On 20th January, 2012,

"at 21.11 hours in cell F1, Jake Hardy

"died as a result of his own deliberate act,

"but the evidence does not establish beyond reasonable doubt

"whether he intended that act to cause his death."

At the inquest, we found out that on the 20th, that night,

-he should have been moved to a safer cell.

-And why wasn't he moved?

I've no idea.

12 failings.

12 times they could've saved his life, but nobody did.

"A failure to provide him

"with adequate personal officer support and monitoring,

"a failure adequately to record

"and consider reports of previous self-harm

"and thoughts of self-harm and suicide,

"a failure to review the level of his risk of self-harm,

"a failure to investigate reports that he was being verbally abused,

"a failure to protect him from the negative behaviour

"of others young persons towards him, a failure to investigate..."

Two months ago, the government announced a review into

the self-inflicted deaths in prison of young people aged 18 to 24.

The findings will be published in a year's time.

You expect a state... er, to look after your children,

not to pamper them, not to love them,

just to keep them warm, fed and safe so they come home.

Why didn't they just look after him?

They only had him 46 days, 46 days.

I had him 17 years and kept him safe...

..but they couldn't look after a child.

Really makes me angry.