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It is a sad reflection on the reality of our management of children who are currently in trouble and offending that these amendments are necessary at all. The amendments are designed to ensure that custody is used only as a last resort for children—when in theory, of course, there is already a requirement that it be the last resort for offenders of all ages except the most dangerous and prolific. We know that that is not the case for adults. Shockingly, it is not true in the case of children either. In the past 10 years, children have increasingly been sent to custody not only for lesser offences but for longer periods, thus violating Article 37(b) of the CRC.
The reality is that the number of children in custody has more than doubled in 15 years, increasing by 110 per cent, so that approximately 3,000 are now in custody. The number of children under 15 in custody has increased by more than 700 per cent. I wish that the noble Lord on the Tory Front Bench would listen; these are terribly important points. The number of children under 15 in custody has increased from 100 to over 800. The numbers are staggering, even more so when one considers that the number of indictable offences has actually decreased by 20 per cent over the same period, that clear-up rates have been stable since 1995 and that 42 per cent fewer people report being victims of crime.
That is crucial evidence on the extent to which we are criminalising our young people today. I believe that it is a disaster for our society and our young people. We know beyond peradventure that custody does virtually nothing to prevent reoffending, as more than 80 per cent of very young offenders aged 15 and under reoffend. Moreover, as has just been discussed, the experience of custody, the removal from home, the disruption of lives and the inevitable alienation of our younger generation, who represent our tomorrow, all of those actually promote criminal behaviour.
We already know that these young people represent the most damaged and vulnerable in our society, for whom treatment and help is desperately needed. However, I fear that we have said this so often that it is becoming a platitude and no one listens to it any more. I am in no way trying to justify or minimise the crimes that young people can and do commit. They can be awful, even disgusting. But let us remember the evidence: offending has been stable; it is custody that has gone up. Furthermore, as we will hear over and over again,
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I am aware that we are developing a culture in our society in which the young are increasingly disliked, even feared. This is being reflected in our legislation. ASBOs, to which the noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred, are born of this. I am also aware how much Ministers dislike international comparisons, but the fact is that, of every 100,000 under 18, we lock up 23—I think that this has already been mentioned—while in France the figure is six.
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The Earl of Onslow: May I briefly interrupt the noble Baroness? I sincerely hope that she goes on quoting these figures time after time, as I will, because the Government have to get them into their head.
Baroness Linklater of Butterstone: I thank the noble Earl for that.
Up the road in Scotland, where, as I have said time and again, all is far from perfect, we at least do not lock up children in custody until they are 16.
I turn to the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend. It is important that we do everything in our power to ensure that it becomes a reality that custody is indeed used as a last resort, for we risk doing great damage to our society as well as our children—and we must keep on saying “children”. The amendments go some way towards achieving this by requiring the use of a YRO first, unless of course the offence is so serious that the YRO cannot be justified. It is an important safeguard, given the reality of what is happening in the use of custody for children today.
The new clause in our amendment would require an ISSP—intensive supervision and surveillance programme—to have been tried before a detention and training order is imposed. The point of YROs is to enable the courts to have greater flexibility in their sentencing, which we welcome, so that the punishment fits not only the crime but the offender. Again, this presumes that all options are available. Having an ISSP as part of the new menu of YROs would further ensure that custody was truly a last resort—the last bulwark. However, it is important that the ISSP option should not be used as a substitute for other community sentences—it must come as the last ditch—although there is evidence that this is happening. However, if it is retained as the last ditch, custody is more likely to be the last resort. That is what our new clause aims to achieve.
I have met and talked to the people who deliver ISSPs; I did so a year or so back in Peckham. I was very impressed by the commitment that they brought to the work, which is indeed very intensive. The work was, in this case, carried out by young men who were often from the same estates as the young offender and who offered understanding and friendship as well as the supervision required; they gave the sense of being involved in the same form of living. The evidence so
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It still remains possible for this provision to be bypassed either under Sections 90 and 91 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 or for “dangerous offenders” sentences under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 if the offence is so very serious or violent. Therefore, ISSPs do not act as a way out of bringing those other, more serious considerations to bear.
I urge the Minister to give these amendments the most serious consideration, as they go to the heart of how we manage young people who offend while keeping custody as a last resort, which I know that he, too, wants. I hope that he can reassure us that the necessary investment of money and manpower is in place so that this is a reality.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: The noble Baroness has just made an important contribution. She knows a lot about these things and has put it simply. She pointed out that youth offending is static and that it is custody that has gone up. That is the truth of the matter and we should be very worried by it. The Minister tried to dismiss the notion that international comparisons are necessarily relevant, but he must be careful to look properly at those figures. They must be relevant. Young people are not all that different these days; they all take part in youth culture. Comparisons matter.
The Government of the day should be giving a lead on this. We have gone a bit mad on young people’s criminality. The media are a bit shocking on the subject; they interact with public opinion and people are afraid of what will happen when they meet a young person. It has all become completely out of hand. I think that the Government should be beginning to educate people about this; they should have the courage to give a lead. I am sure that my party would assist in that, from what I understand of its thinking. A lead should be given and people should begin to understand that, in most cases, shutting someone up makes the situation much worse. We all understand that it is occasionally necessary. For certain young people, there is, for a variety of reasons, no alternative. However, that is seldom the case. The figures that we have heard this evening are shocking. I wonder whether the Government might contemplate beginning to educate the public on this subject, which I believe would be extremely helpful.
Lord Ramsbotham: In the spirit of what many noble Lords have said, I have just three observations to make in adding my support to the amendments. First, I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, mentioned the ridiculous Youth Justice Board target to achieve a 10 per cent reduction in the number of those in custody, as that highlights one of the problems. This area is bedevilled by a large number of silly and inappropriate targets, which deflect people from the real purpose.
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My second point is that, as I mentioned earlier, in our consideration of the Children and Young Persons Bill we have been discussing just this sort of problem in relation to children who are in the hands either of the Minister for Children, who happens to be in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, or of the social services. This shows up the lack of a joined-up approach. Surely if there is a Minister for Children and she really is responsible for them, she should be made responsible for pulling together all the people who have a responsibility in this area. We seem to have a totally fragmented approach, which I do not think is helpful.
My third point reflects something that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said. I have said this on many occasions in relation to many other things. None of this will happen unless someone is made responsible and accountable for making it happen. You can have Ministers speaking and officials writing goodness knows what, but unless somebody is made to do it, it will remain as a spoken or written word. The amendments highlight the need to have doers doing things rather than talkers talking.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford: I rise to support those remarks and to make three brief points. First, there is a danger in our debates of pulling apart the welfare of the child and the needs of the community. If we need a theme it is to bring those two things together. When we are serving the needs and welfare of children, we are serving the needs of society, the community and victims. When we are attending to the needs of victims and society, we should properly be attending to the welfare of children. If we can hold those things together we will get it right.
Secondly, public policy needs to be consistent. When local authorities take children into care, the one thing they seek to avoid, if possible, is putting them into residential units, which is a last resort solution for children. We have the needs of the child in mind and our experience of such homes in the past means that we are very cautious about that solution. Thirdly—this has not been said in the debate—if it is necessary within those principles to take children into custody, such must be the conduct that that too serves the interests of children and their welfare. There is a danger of saying, “We don’t know what to do with this hard core of children and young people who we can’t cope with in society, so we must put them in custody”. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, reminded us earlier of 60 young people with three staff looking after them. That is 60 too many in custody. The style and content of what we are seeking to achieve for children who are held in custody is part of this issue.
The Earl of Listowel: I apologise for being absent, but I was attending a reception at No. 11 Downing Street for the National Grid Transco offender programme, which has reduced reoffending in its charges from 70 per cent to 7 per cent by giving young people, and now the older offenders with whom it works, a mentor and a guaranteed job after three months’ training. That is relevant to what we are discussing in demonstrating how effective, as an
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote: Having listened to the debate, I add my wholehearted support. The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater of Butterstone, put her finger on the benefits of this approach. I hope that the Minister will take it to heart and respond, as clearly the intentions are good and the results are good for the community, whom we have to do our best to protect. Above all, we need the extra resources to stop the offender reoffending. I agree entirely with the right reverend Prelate.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine: In anticipating what the Minister might say in response to Amendment No. 6, I thought that I would get my retaliation in first. I want to say briefly why I think the Bill’s current option will not help in reversing the increase in child custody that my noble friend Lady Linklater so eloquently pointed out.
We know that without a clear restriction on custody, courts will wholly or largely substitute that for other community sentences. There is good evidence for that. The ISS programme, which was rolled out nationally in October 2003, was made available to courts on a significant scale with 5,568 placements in 2005-06, and 1,350 places in use at any one time. It has been heavily promoted as an intensive and robust programme, and the evaluation evidence is that it successfully addresses a wide range of needs among serious and persistent young offenders. Yet, as my noble friend, pointed out, in a period when youth crime has been stable, the number in custody has risen.
As currently drafted the Bill is unlikely to change that. The Government argue that under Clause 1(4), ISS would be available only for offences that are
custody would otherwise be appropriate.
However, the test in subsection (4)(a) simply identifies the maximum sentence a category of offence can attract, saying nothing about what the particular offence or person warrants. Subsection (4)(b) is highly subjective, which turns on the court’s opinion. Neither of those provisions directly tackles the uses of custody, which is what we are seeking to address with the proposed new clause.
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Lord Kingsland: As the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, said, custody is expensive and damaging, and in any case, it is largely ineffective. The JCHR wants statutory protection for government policy that custody should be the last resort. We have two amendments that seek to achieve that objective.
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I have a question for the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater of Butterstone. What if an offender commits a first offence that is so serious that the child represents a real threat to public safety? Both the amendments require a sentence that is below the custody threshold, but those circumstances must raise the question of whether one can generalise the situation to that degree. That is just a thought.
We fully agree that a custody sentence should be the last resort; it should be used only when everything else has been tried. In that sense we are completely in tune with the animating spirit of the amendments. The JCHR report states that the Government are also in agreement with them. The difficulty with these amendments is the one that faced the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, in the amendment she moved almost at the beginning of today’s proceedings. How do we make such amendments have operational effect? When we get into the micromanagement of the criminal justice system, at every turn there are specific provisions in different forms of legislation, some of which stretch back years if not decades, which frustrate these objectives. Putting them on the statute book will not override the specific obligation.
That is why we have taken a slightly different approach from that of my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, by tabling a series of amendments in the sentencing part of the Bill to give sufficient flexibility to the bench of magistrates or the circuit judge to prevent them having to ratchet up orders until a custodial sentence becomes obligatory for a minor offence.
The Earl of Onslow: I absolutely take the point, but I refer to new paragraph (b), which states:
“the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it, was so serious that, notwithstanding the age of the offender”,
an order under subsection (3)(a) or (b),
Does that not cover the objection to which the noble Lord reasonably referred?
Lord Kingsland: It may well. I simply put the question; I did not know what was the answer. The noble Earl appears to have given me, as he so often does, a completely armour-plated, ocean-going explanation.
Baroness Linklater of Butterstone:I just thought that I might add to the list. I gabbled it rather, because I am very bad at reading out the names of the sections. Sections 90 and 91 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, or dangerous offender sentences under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, can bypass the situation that we are talking about. Where the noble Lord is worried about what to do about the very serious and violent offender, there is provision for that to be invoked.
Lord Kingsland: So we can be reassured that the amendments are not contaminated by the matter that I raised.
I emphasise again that, in my view, the key to all this is trust: trust the individual who is trying the case; trust him to get it right. Do not require him to end up awarding a custodial sentence in inappropriate circumstances.
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: This has been a very interesting and serious debate. I must say that the prospect of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, being left-wing struck me with some amusement, as it certainly did him.
The Earl of Onslow: With not nearly as much horror as it struck me, I can promise the noble Lord.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: But it does remind me that he is also a radical reformer of your Lordships' House, as I well remember from when we debated the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. He, the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Strathclyde, and I were each one of four opposed to the massed ranks of supporters of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. That is by way of inviting him to come back to our regular Friday engagements on that most important matter.
I was very interested in the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, about the late Lucy Faithfull. My father, in addition to being a clergyman, was a social worker employed by Oxford City Council. For some time, Lucy Faithfull was director of social services. The noble Baroness will know that it was not only in your Lordships' House that she was a very much admired person. I shall come to the point that the noble Baroness raised about that piece of legislation.
I was also interested in the whole question discussed by several noble Lords about how young people are regarded by society. There was a view among noble Lords that part of the reason that more young people are in custody reflects not what we might regard and what I described earlier as rational public opinion, but more emotion, where young people wearing hoodies are stigmatised. As someone with a number of young children still at home or at university, that concerns me.
The answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, is that the Government have a responsibility for encouraging society as a whole to think positively about the contribution that most young people make to our society. I think that young people now have to work much harder at school than I ever had to. Many of the pressures that they are under are considerably greater than when I was growing up. I also think that a benefit of the new department for children will be to enable us to have a greater focus in projecting the good things that so many young people do and represent. It is important to bear that in mind. Equally, with those children who are not so good, we have to have custodial sentences available as an option, but I agree that it should be as a last resort. That is what the law is and that is what we will seek to do in practice.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made some interesting comments about targets. I know all about targets as a former Minister for targets in the National Health Service. I well understand what he says: that when separate government departments, quangos or executive agencies have targets inconsistent with those of other agencies, you run into trouble. My experience is that that is easier to say than to do. It is not for the want of trying. The new PSA target approach recognises much more the need for interdepartmental consistency.
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