Channel 4 to explore life behind bars of America's Kid Criminals

30 January 2015

In America at any one time there are over 70,000 children behind bars. In Kid Criminals, an extraordinary two-part documentary from an award-winning production team, Channel 4 will explore some of the toughest juvenile prisons in the US and meet the child inmates, some of whom have committed the most shocking crimes imaginable.

In the US state of Indiana, children as young as 10 can be tried within the adult criminal justice system if the crimes are deemed serious enough or if they are repeated offenders. Most juveniles will have indeterminate sentences.

Produced by Plum Pictures and with unprecedented access, this two-part documentary will deal with the different aspects of these juvenile prisons, following them from the intake unit at Logansport Correctional Facility where all juveniles in the state are processed to the male inmates at maximum security Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility and the female juveniles at Madison Juvenile Correctional Facility.

There are currently 233 juveniles serving sentences for crimes which include battery, armed robbery, arson and murder.

With extraordinary insight into the crimes and their aftermath, both guards and inmates give poignant and candid interviews on life on the inside.

Clutter (14) and McNair (14) are best friends and roommates held together at Pendleton Correctional facility. They are also sex offenders. Most offenders in Indiana have non determinate sentences. The teens have to complete a sex offender’s programme before they are eligible to be released.

William McConnell is Pendleton Juvenile's most notorious sex offender. At 18 years old this is his third time in the department of corrections. This time he's spent eight month on the segregation unit where staff can keep a close eye on him so he doesn't attempt to groom the younger juveniles. In the programme he says: “I don't like hurting people. Sometimes I have a click in my head that says; you know what, they wouldn’t mind if I hurt them.”

At the girls prison, Madison Correctional, we meet Artyamsoal (17) who has been in and out of prison since the age of 12 years old and is now serving time for an arson which killed three children.

The film follows the daily routine in the three high security prisons, and witnesses the effect their crime has had both on the children and their families.

Clutter commented: “I'm just going to be honest; I lie, steal and manipulate people both outside and in here. I know right from wrong, I just choose to do wrong.”

Ms Prince, the prison counsellor: “Some of these kids have been gone so long the parents don't even know them anymore... They're growing up before my eyes.”

In some cases, it was the families themselves who introduced their children to a life of crime, as one mother reveals her own criminal and violent past to her son on a prison visit where he is serving time for breaking into an apartment and stealing a handgun.

This hard-hitting documentary also looks at the work of the counsellors, superintendents and case workers who deal with the day to day issues around working with children whose crimes are so serious it could see them spend most of their adult lives inside.

 

Kid Criminals will air on Channel 4 on Tuesday 10 February at 10pm.

 

Production Company: Plum Pictures

Executive Producer: Stuart Cabb

Series Director: Matt Pelly

Series Producer: Lisa Keane

Producer: Max Andrews

Commissioned for Channel 4 by Anna Miralis, Commissioning Editor for Documentaries.