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Health and Social Services Department
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Liberté House, 19-23 La Motte Street
St Helier, Jersey, JE2 4SY
Tel: +44 (0)1534 445030
Fax: +44 (0)1534 445050
27 August 2020
Dear Deputy Rob Ward and Andy Harris ,
Thank you for your letter inviting us to express our view on the proposed change to the deployment of tasers by the States of Jersey Police.
We are concerned by the possibility of tasers being used on young people in jersey. We would be interested to talk further with the police about the circumstances in which they feel that it may be necessary to use a taser against a child and to work to develop a cross department strategy to reduce anti-social behaviour. We would imagine that this would involve a more proactive approach to reducing drug and alcohol use across the population and in developing more cohesive services for young offenders and young people with learning disabilities or neurodevelopmental concerns who show challenging behaviour.
A briefing paper commissioned by the House of Commons (2016) on taser use in England and Wales outlines a range of specific concerns about the impact of using tasers on young people. These include:-
- There is the potential for taser discharge to be administered to individuals whose behaviour has been influenced by an underlying mental health condition, or learning difficulty. These may negatively influence how affected individuals interact with the police and thereby elevate the risk of exposure to taser discharge or other forms of force.
- The longer term psychological implications of exposure to an extremely painful taser discharge, especially among children , remain unexplored
- There is heightened risk of injury from taser induced falls for those who are intoxicated by drugs or alcohol and for adolescents
- The document also highlights that the UN committee on the rights of the child has expressed concern about the use of taser on children in 2008.
Yours sincerely
Lee Hayward CAMHS team manager
Dr Laura Birtwistle Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Dr Catherine Keep Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist