The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

I grew up next to a children's prison called Glenthorne Youth Treatment Centre. One day, two of the prisoners managed to scale the wall surrounding the prison, where they stood, uncertain what to do next.

My dad yelled, "PAUL, PAUL, GET OUTSIDE QUICK! COME UN' 'AVE A LOOK A' THIS!"

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. I followed their gaze and saw two teenage boys standing precariously on top of the prison wall. Their faces looked uncertain, scared. They somehow scaled the wall but now had nowhere else to go. It was a 20-foot drop on the either side.

"GO ON, JUMP!" shouted my dad. The neighbours giggled nervously.

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!"

"FUCK OFF!" shouted one of the youths, with barely-concealed terror in his voice. They were just two scared teenage boys standing on top of a precarious tall wall.

"GO ON, JUMP YOU LITTLE BASTARD!" shouted my dad. He was loving it. He loves having people to hate, including criminals, immigrants, and the man from the local corner shop who once sold him a packet of expired nuts.

"FUCK YOU!" shouted back the youth.

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

At the same time, we could hear the calm and reassuring voice of a warden trying to talk the inmates down: "Come on now, tou need to climb 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. I wonder what makes my dad different? How many other dads get enjoyment out of cojoling two scared teenagers into jumping off a wall and breaking their arms and legs?

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.

Yes, it's true

It's true, I really did grow up next to a prison. 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 getting booed off stage on Britain's Got Talent. It was "Britain's toughest jail for young offenders" according to The Mirror (an article from 23 April 1994).

Just now I went on Google Maps and measured the distance from Glenthorne Youth Treatment Centre and the house where I grew up. It was 45 metres. 45 metres between me and some of Britain's hardest young criminals. So essentially, my childhood home and the Youth Treatment Centre were separated by little more than a short sprint.

And a giant wall. You could see the prison's tall wall behind the houses. The wall was made of dark red brick. Surrounding the wall ran a 17-foot (possibly electric??) chainlink fence. When I was little, 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. That is, until I was about ten years old, when curiosity led 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.

"It's a children's prison," he said, off-handedly.

I accepted this as if he'd said "That's an office building" or "That's an archive center". I went inside to play Sonic on my Mega Drive.

Later I thought about it, and thought: Actually, a prison made a lot of sense! Given the huge wall and massive fence.

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.

I read later that prisoners who behaved well were sometimes 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 prison closed in 2002 because of the danger to the community. It's now a psychiatric hospital.