Dragged kicking and screaming: Agency and violence for children entering secure accommodation

Children entering secure accommodation, also known as ‘secure care’, are prevented from exercising free choice over most aspects of everyday life. This paper focuses on the relationship between agency and violence during transference to and early time in secure accommodation. Sharing interview extracts from 11 young people with experience of secure care as children, we explore how the routine processes of ‘suppressing’ children's agency supports the emergence of violence. We argue that the manner of transfer to secure accommodation creates a violent encounter that forces children's emotion and agency to redirect and intensify onto the self and others as further violence.