A/HRC/38/36 societal interests in punishing women with incarceration, for what are most often nonviolent offences, with the best interests of the child and the obligation set out in article 37 (b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That obligation requires the implementation of all means possible to avoid the detention of the child, including alternative models and responses for mothers. 66. The solitary confinement of children and the degrading and humiliating conditions in detention have been described as mental violence. 42 Many other daily forms of “organized hurt”43 are perpetrated though no less pernicious means. Children’s creativity, communication, sleeping, waking, playing, learning, resting, socializing and relationships are compulsively controlled in detention and transgressions punished, while those administering the punishment enjoy impunity. 67. Daily deprivations are often complemented by behavioural interventions in order to “treat” and “reform”. Such “treatment” approaches further entrench the idea of a troubled child “in need of repair”, ignoring that changes are needed to address right-to-health determinants, such as inequalities, poverty, violence and discrimination, especially among groups in vulnerable situations. This, in turn, leads to children living in forced confinement and fuels their struggles. Such oversimplified strategies are not in conformity with the right to health. 68. Coping mechanisms employed by stressed and desperate children, which include assaults against themselves and others, are perceived by society and judicial and welfare systems as acts that are self-harming, anti-social and/or violent. The harm inflicted by institutions themselves too often goes unacknowledged. 69. There can be no hesitation in concluding that the act of detaining children is a form of violence. The Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the use of detention as a default strategy. Looking forward, a child rights-based strategy must strengthen even further the presumption against detention of children with a view to abolition. V. Women, the right to health, and confinement 70. Women comprise a small minority (7 per cent) of the global prison population, but the number of incarcerated women is increasing and at a greater rate than that of incarcerated men.44 The number of women and young girls held outside of criminal justice settings worldwide is unknown. Most are first-time offenders suspected of, or charged with, minor, non-violent offences, pose no risk to the public and should probably not be in prison at all.45 Paradoxically, the meteoric rise of women in detention regimes over the past two decades has brought greater visibility and gender-focused reforms, but with limited improvements as regards the suffering of detained women and the increase in their numbers.46 71. The suffering experienced by women who are imprisoned or involuntarily confined and the related negative impact on the enjoyment of their right to health is understood to be significantly greater than that experienced by men. Power and authority in prisons and other places of detention and confinement, such as large psychiatric institutions, emerge from historical patriarchal, hyper-masculinist constructions of punishment and control. 47 The acceptability of such environments for the realization of the right to health and for the wellbeing of women is thus questionable. 42 43 44 45 46 47 14 See Committee on the Rights of the Child, general comment No. 13, para. 21. Hans von Hentig, Punishment: Its Origin, Purpose and Psychology (1937); Barry Goldson, “Child imprisonment: a case for abolition”, Youth Justice, vol. 5, No. 2 (August 2005). Roy Walmsley, World Female Imprisonment List, 4th ed. (2017). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Handbook on Women in Prison, 2nd ed. (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.14.IV.3). Cassandra Shaylor, “Neither kind nor gentle: the perils of ‘gender responsive justice’”, in Phil Scraton and Jude McCulloch, eds., The Violence of Incarceration (Routledge, 2008). M. Bandypadhyay, “Competing masculinities in a prison”, Men and Masculinities, vol. 9, No. 2 (2006).