CHAPTER 1 DEPRIVATION OF LIBERTY IS DEPRIVATION OF CHILDHOOD her sentence in complete solitary confinement. Nevertheless, corporal punishment as official means to uphold discipline in juvenile prisons equally applied to her. Armadale, a juvenile prison for girls in Jamaica, had become a symbol for structural violence and lack of empathy for detainees. Collective punishments were meted out even for minor breaches of the prison rules, and the girls were routinely locked up in their overcrowded bedrooms and were prevented from taking part in educational and leisure activities. This resulted in a major riot in which many girls were severely burned and seven died. I am still visited by the memory of interviewing some of the badly traumatised survivors. Children in a child centre in Togo, 2007 In Uruguay, the situation of accused and convicted children, who were held in special child detention facilities in extremely poor conditions, was alarming. The system of detention was based on a punitive approach. Children had no opportunities for education, work or any other rehabilitative activity, and the boys were locked up for up to 22 hours a day in their cells. There were no toilets in the cells, which sometimes forced detainees to wait for hours for a guard to let them go to the toilet. At the Piedras Home, which was a very 6