Members of the Advisory Panel visited all nine prisons holding girls under 18 years old between February and April 1997. They spoke to management, staff, and other professionals working with the young women and interviewed 61 of the 74 inmates themselves. More than 300 girls aged 15, 16, and 17 are being held each year in adult jails with adult women, which violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. There are no establishments solely designated as young offender institutions for female offenders. Regimes are barely rehabilitative, and in some prisons girls can be locked in their cells for up to 18 hours a day because of staff shortages. Adolescent girls are subjected to a prison environment where emotionally damaged women regularly engage in self-harm, where bullying is endemic, and where drugs are widely available. This report recommends legislation that prohibits the use of prison custody for all girls aged under 18, the full implementation of all articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the placement of girls who require secure conditions in local authority secure accommodation units, and investment in and promotion of noncustodial sentences of teens, with detention allowed only under exceptional circumstances and as a last resort. A 17-item bibliography