We lock up far more children and young people than most people realise and most of us have little idea what that experience, at a very vulnerable age will mean for them.  What happens to them inside is crucial to how they will emerge as young adults. I was given a grant by the Gulbenkian Foundation to try to find some answers. In eighteen months of research I visited six youth prisons and talked with inmates, staff, reformers, lawyers and those who support prisoners’ families.