My Lords, I will speak also to the other amendments in my name in this group. Amendments 12 and 13 to Schedule 2, and Amendments 34 and 35 to Clause 37, seek to remove imprisonment as a sanction for children breaching their IPNAs or failing to comply with police dispersal orders respectively. Schedule 2 provides for supervision orders to be made against children breaching their IPNAs. This is adequate for dealing with children of all ages. There is no need to introduce detention as an additional sanction for over-14s. The case for why this is necessary has not been made. Will the Minister explain why this is seen by the Government as necessary?
Amendment 34 removes imprisonment as a sanction for children failing to comply with a police dispersal order. Amendment 35 sets out a range of alternative sanctions for such children. These measures aim to ensure that the discretion of the court is not fettered. I am grateful to the Minister for allowing us an opportunity to meet yesterday to discuss my concerns in this area. I will come to my final Amendment 86 in this group, which is on youth services, when I have discussed the other amendments.
There are two key reasons why imprisonment should not be available for children breaching their IPNA or failing to comply with a police dispersal order or power. First, imprisonment is expensive, ineffective and counterproductive. In 2010-11 the reoffending rate for children leaving custody was 72.6%. Youth custody is expensive. The average cost of a place at a secure training centre is £178,000 per annum. There is clear evidence to suggest that for many children, incarceration increases the risk of recidivism. Imprisoning children, even for a short period, can introduce them to criminal networks that become impossible to escape later.
I fear that we may be introducing more children to schools of crime and preparing them for later universities of crime. I have visited many young offender institutions and secure training centres. I visited Feltham young offender institution 13 or 15 years ago, and then visited
it recently with a number of chief executives from London local authorities and the chair of the Youth Justice Board, Frances Done. It was striking how much things had changed in that time. Thanks to this Government, there are far fewer young people in custody, which is very much to be welcomed. Those young people who are left are very challenging, tough and difficult to work with. In the Bill, we are considering bringing in some young people—children—who have not even committed a crime to spend three months or so in detention with these very hard nuts. Do we really want to mix such children with such children?
From that visit to Feltham young offender institution, the concern of the chief executives of the local authorities in London about gang violence also became clear. We heard a transformation from my first visit to Feltham. No longer were two young people getting into a fight with one young person, but 13, 14 or 15 young men would be attacking one or two boys because they were not in the right gang. It was important for the secure estate to know from the local authorities which gangs their particular boys came from, so that they could manage the risks around that.
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There is also a concern that we are bringing into these conditions young people who may not be a member of the right gang and may be victimised because of that. If they are not a member of a gang, one can speculate that they will be by the end of their time in the secure estate, because they will need to be to survive. I am very concerned about introducing more young people into the secure estate, given how much risk for them is involved and how detrimental for us it might be for them to have that experience.
The second main reason for opposing imprisonment is that it is a severe and anomalous punishment that may be incompatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Allowing children to be imprisoned for IPNA breach or non-compliance with a police dispersal power is inconsistent with how prison is used in the wider youth justice system. In the criminal justice system, children are imprisoned only for the most serious offences or for persistent offending. Failure to comply with a police dispersal order is only a minor offence. IPNA breach is a civil offence—a contempt of court. This Bill introduces for the first time detention for children who are in contempt of court for minor civil wrongs. Currently the law does not allow this to happen, except in very limited circumstances.
Arguably, imprisoning children for IPNA breach or failure to comply with a police dispersal order is not consistent with the UK’s obligations as a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 37 of UNCRC states that children should be imprisoned only as a “measure of last resort”. The United Nations standard minimum rules for the administration of juvenile justice—the Beijing Rules—state that:
“Deprivation of personal liberty shall not be imposed unless the juvenile is adjudicated of a serious act involving violence against another person or a persistence in committing other serious offences and unless there is no other appropriate response”.
I would argue that there are a number of other appropriate responses.
In conclusion, I assure the Minister that Amendment 86, on youth services and the duty on local authorities to secure appropriate services to prevent young people from being involved in anti-social behaviour, is merely a probing amendment. I would like to see the Minister attending to and looking at the statutory guidance for local authorities on services and activities to improve young people’s well-being. I support the broad principle set out in the guidance and acknowledge the reference there to youth work, and to young people’s personal and social development. However, the guidance is so broad in its interpretation that all local authorities are able to say that they are meeting some of these requirements so far as is reasonably practicable. Because the guidance says specifically that government will not prescribe which services and activities for young people local authorities should fund or deliver, or to what level, I am sure that more than ever the level of support that young people get access to is determined by where they live.
Last year, spending on youth services declined by 10% overall. Spending on getting young people off drugs and alcohol declined by 18%. If we are to be serious about preventing anti-social behaviour—and especially if we are talking about putting young people in custody because of their anti-social behaviour—it is important that we ensure that we have the vital youth services that will prevent this behaviour. This is a healthier and more civilised way of intervening with these young people, and it is well evidenced in preventing such behaviour. I would appreciate the Minister’s assurance that he will look at the guidance and consider whether it might be tightened to some degree to ensure that adequate youth services are provided.
It is welcome that considerable funding is being given to police and crime commissioners in this area, but what all young people need, particularly vulnerable young people, is continuity of relationships. They need to build a relationship of trust with an institution or an individual, they need their youth clubs—and they need them to be there over a period of time, not opening and closing depending on the whims of the local authority or the state of the economy.
I am sorry to have spoken for so long, but perhaps I may conclude by saying how sad I was to learn of the death of Mr Paul Goggins MP, a former Minister for Prisons and a well respected parliamentarian, with whom I had the privilege of working on a number of occasions as the vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children and Young People in Care. He began life as a social worker and managed a children’s home. He tabled in the other place an amendment to the Children and Families Bill that is currently proceeding through this House, which the Government eventually accepted. It is described as one of the most important changes for looked after children in a generation and allows young people to remain in foster care with their foster carers until the age of 21, where they choose to do so. The Government are supporting that with £40 million for its implementation. He also worked very hard to introduce special financial provision for looked after young people and did much other work in this area. I am sorry to hear of his early demise and I
hope that it will be of some comfort to his family to know of the respect in which he is held by this and the other place.
I beg to move.