Britain: Child prisoner restraint techniques revealed

Details of the techniques used in a secret manual governing the use of physical restraint in private child prisons were revealed today. Some of the measures employed in the secure training centres, detailed in the "instructor's manual", include ramming knuckles into ribs and raking shoes down the shins, the Observer reported. The contents of the manual were revealed after The Youth Justice Board (YJB) agreed to hand over the document earlier this month. The document includes descriptions of "distraction" techniques, which deliberately inflict pain. The Observer detailed some of the techniques such as placing an "inverted knuckle into the trainee's sternum and drive inward and upward." Another practice reads: "Continue to carry alternate elbow strikes to the young person's ribs until a release is achieved."