Criminal justice and wasted youth

As the Criminal Justice Bill is scrutinised by MPs, Pam Hibbert argues for a comprehensive review of the system in relation to children who offend

Attitudes to children in Britain are often ambivalent, polarising between an idealised concept of childhood - where children are seen as in need of protection - and a more cynical view where they are regarded as a threat.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in our attitudes to children who come into conflict with the law.

Not only have we seen a demonisation of some children - as in the Thompson and Venables case - but we appear to have moved to a situation where children are deemed more culpable for their criminal behaviour than adults.

Currently, 88% of all crime is committed by adults and youth crime has declined by almost 21% between 1992 and 2001.

At the same time, according to Nacro reports, there has been an 800% rise in the number of those younger than 15 who have been sentenced to detention over the past decade, while less than 10% of crime committed by those younger than 18 is violent or sexual in nature.

We know that children who end up in custody come from the most disadvantaged and poorest families and communities.

More than half of them have been in care, half have been excluded from school, up to 80% have a reading age of eleven years old or worse, more than 70% have suffered abuse and a recent survey by the Prison Reform Trust indicated that as many as nine out of ten have mental health problems.

This catalogue of disadvantage and abuse is then frequently compounded by a child's experience in prison.

There are three precepts underpinning the penalties for criminal behaviour available to magistrates and judges - those of deterrence, retribution and public protection and rehabilitation.

Adults are normally held to be fully responsible and culpable for their actions and behaviour.

All child development studies show that the notions of responsibility and culpability develop gradually in children and that this development is not necessarily congruent with their chronological age.

If we believe that adults have the potential for reform and rehabilitation then we must accept that children, still in development, have even greater potential.

It seems inconceivable then that our youth justice system appears to hold children more culpable than adults and discriminates against them.

If we look at comparisons in sentencing, particularly some of those proposed in the Criminal Justice Bill, these anomalies are clear.

Currently, a magistrate can send an adult to prison for a maximum of six months, yet a two-year detention and training order can be imposed on a child as young as 12 in a Youth Court.

One of the sentences for adults outlined in the Criminal Justice Bill is that of 'custody plus', where a short period in custody is followed by a longer period receiving support and supervision in the community.

An adult sentenced to custody plus will serve a minimum of two weeks in custody and 26 weeks receiving support and supervision, whereas a child, for the same offence, will serve a minimum of eight weeks in custody and receive only eight weeks of supervision and support.

The children's charity Barnardo's is calling for a comprehensive review of the law and policy for children in trouble, based on a children's human rights framework.

This would provide a clear set of principles to inform law, policy and practice.

A review would also need to take into account welfare legislation affecting children, such as the Children Act 1989, as well as health and education legislation and policy.

If crime prevention and decriminalisation are priorities for the government, then attention needs to be given to dealing with children who offend within a welfare-based model.

This needs to capitalise on the impressionability and potential for change in our children and ensure that those deprived of their liberty are detained in humane conditions designed to address the issues facing damaged children.

Pam Hibbert is Barnardo's principal policy officer