By Dominic Casciani BBC News Online community affairs reporter

The research, by Professor David Wilson for the Children's Society, and published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, involved interviews with 45 prisoners.

The young men, aged between 16 and 17, were selected by the Prison Service at three institutions which cannot be named.

Feltham Young Offenders Institution, which has had a history of racist abuse problems, was not one of the three.

What the prisoners said

Throughout the interviews, Prof Wilson said the inmates detailed abuse and situations which made them feel they were treated differently because of their ethnicity.

What if all the black lads were on the highest regimes and the white lads on the lowest - then they'd know how it felt, because it feels like me Black prisoner

"What if I was all black govs [officers] and all black lads on the servery," said one inmate.

"What if it was all black lads that worked outside as orderlies and it was all the white lads that were banded up?

"What if all the black lads were on the highest regimes and the white lads on the lowest, and who kept getting stitched up and twisted up?

"Then they'd know how it felt, because it feels like me."

Many inmates told Prof Wilson they had directly experienced abuse from prisoner officers.

One said: "I've been called a 'chimp' before, I was also called a 'golliwog' by one of these officers. And I ended up getting into trouble for that."

Grafitti complaints

Another inmate from a southern institution said little had been done there to remove or stop written abuse.

Tackling racism is one of the key priorities of the Prison Service - Phil Wheatley's predecessor acknowledged publicly that the Prison Service was institutionally racist and progress is being made Prison Service Spokesman Inmates suffer 'racism in silence'

"I was coming back from the library and I saw a poster with graffiti on it. It said 'I hate niggers'. I waited for weeks for someone to take that poster down.

"No one seemed to be bothered, we kept walking back and forth pointing out what it said, and we kept asking why it was still there a month later.

"It was there because they either don't care or because they hate niggers too."

Others said they were angry at what they believed to be hypocrisy from prison officers.

"If I was out on the street they wouldn't even dream of saying some of the things that they say to us in here," said one.

Another added: "If this was [a city] there would be no way they could get away wit some of the shit that happens in here."

Twin strategies

Prof Wilson said the inmates had developed two strategies to survive the "game" of prison life and the racism they encountered: "Keeping quiet" or "going nuts".

BLACK INMATES ON WHITE INMATES They don't talk to each other - they're not like us - the white lads always want to hang with a nigger 'cause they feel safe Young black prisoner, southern institution

One interviewee told Prof Wilson that when confronted by racism, he chose to bite his tongue or hold fire on fighting back.

But rather than keep entirely quiet, black prisoners would often tell their peers exactly what had happened.

In turn, this meant they were more likely to stick together because "we're all one, we're all black", as one young man said.

Others used the word "nigger" to describe themselves, in an attempt to prevent it being used as a term of abuse.

In contrast, the black prisoners thought their white counterparts did not have the same level of solidarity because they had not been forced into finding solace together.

"They don't talk to each other - they're not like us," said one. "The white lads always want to hang with a nigger 'cause they feel safe."

Inmates switched to "going nuts" at moments of crisis, said Prof Wilson, or when keeping quiet failed to prevent abuse taking place.

For instance, a key grievance raised by some of the Muslim prisoners interviewed was a perceived and persistent failure of the authorities to allow them adequate time to pray.

But prisoners knew they would inevitably be physically overpowered or outnumbered by prison officers.

Official reporting channels

Prof Wilson says that despite having conducted 45 interviews, only five of the inmates knew of the Prison Service's official channels for reporting racist abuse, including each establishment's race relations liaison officer.

Only one had used the official channels to have a complaint investigated.

"The vast majority of interviewees never made complaints through official procedures because they were unaware that official complaints procedures existed," he said.

One inmate who knew how to complain said he would never bother using the system.

"When you fill in a complaint form they don't do ... nothing. Even if you fill out a form, the govs go upstairs and they say 'no, I didn't do that'.

"There's no point."