This afternoon I was in a

prison for teenagers, behind tall grey walls that shore up the outside world in an attempt to stop it from seeping in. Prisons are not one place but many places, many prisons. Inside the dirty concrete walls are laid out a series of cages, tall sheets of mesh with each horizontal narrower than a finger's width and topped with razor wire.

So I was led from door to cage, to cage to door and onwards into a place where everything is grey like the sky on this cold winter Monday. The cell blocks always smell sour, not like boiled cabbage or even stale piss, it's a smell unique to prisons and they all smell the same. A heavy smell that bears down and seeps into everything, it might be the smell of anxiety, or fear, or anger. I'm not sure. One thing I do know is it's wrong to lock up teenagers in places such as these as though they were cattle. Upon leaving I had to wait by a barred gate and on the other side a boy paced three steps one way then three the other. He looked like he was spoiling for a fight, on edge, he looked like he had been hunted. You don't believe me? Think I'm too fanciful? This is what prison does to people. Where young minds are squeezed and compressed into tiny spaces behind iron doors, inside large cages, surrounded by concrete walls, under razor wire.

They've put some plant pots here and there next to the walkways that lead to the visitors centre. I saw a flower with blue petals and a golden centre that was white along the edge. The boys are not allowed out except to walk from building to building so they never see the flowers or if they do I bet they never stop to look. In a place like that what's a flower supposed to mean? Amidst all that anger and fear what is anything supposed to mean? For some children it becomes too much and so there have been 28 deaths in custody since 1990 in this country including three suicides during the last 12 months. Of the three who took their own lives one was 14 years old. Along side this there are record levels of self harm among children in prison. Record levels of children in prison, record levels of suicide, record levels of self harm. New Labour? New brutalism more like.

Prisons are foul places and after all these years I'm glad I'll never have to set foot in another one.