Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Baroness Linklater of Butterstone Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Lords Chamber

As Frances Done always used to say to us, it is wonderful that we have reduced the number of young people in custody. It was a blot on our nation’s record compared with the continent that we had so many young people in custody. However, it means that the ones left are those with the most complex needs and the most challenging young people, so putting them all in one place must raise concerns about safety. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone (LD)]

My Lords, I shall echo most of what has already been said. I think that around the Chamber we are pretty well agreed that what is being planned in general for the most vulnerable children in our community is entirely inappropriate and inadequate.

First, I shall speak to the new clause proposed in Amendment 43B concerning sentencing guidelines and provisions regarding secure colleges. The clause would amend the sentencing guidelines laid down in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 in relation to those aged under 18. It states that no court should impose a custodial sentence upon an offender who is under 18 simply because a place happens to be available at a secure college when otherwise a community sentence would have been imposed, or impose a longer sentence precisely because a place at a secure college is available. It reflects a concern that sentencers might be attracted by the idea of a secure college at the expense of a community sentence because of the possibility of the education that may be on offer. That of course is very superficially attractive, not least because at this point in time we have no idea what that educational provision will consist of.

It is rather like when the DTO was introduced in 2000. It was attractive to magistrates because it appeared to combine punishment with rehabilitation and protection to society, but it simply resulted in a surge of children in custody. With similar perceptions, there is a real risk that secure colleges could drive up the numbers in custody. It is important to remember that custody really must be the disposal of last resort for young people in particular. They have the worst outcomes of all sentencing options for society, as well as for the offender, as 70% of children and 58% of 18 to 21 year-olds will reoffend within a year of their release.

We know that non-custodial sentences offer far better outcomes all round, particularly in terms of reoffending. However, the form of custody envisaged by the secure college, by virtue of its scale alone, offers little hope of achieving much in terms of improving the life chances of the children and young people it is planned that it will hold. Some 320 children under one roof, or at least in one campus, is just an impossible size for anything to be done—as everybody has been saying—on a personal basis.

There is an additional worry, highlighted originally by Sir Alan Beith MP at Second Reading in the Commons, that the education said to be on offer is likely to be piecemeal at best when the average length of custody is 79 days and hardly long enough to complete any course, even if a young offender happened to arrive at the college at the beginning of one. They take pot luck to join in when they arrive. So the reality of the college experience from an educational point of view alone is—

[Lord Faulks]

I am very sorry to interrupt my noble friend but I wonder whether she is not in fact talking to a different amendment.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

Am I?

[Lord Faulks]

I think you are.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

I am talking to Amendment 43B.

[Lord Faulks]

It is not in this group.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

Oh, it is in a different group. I am so sorry. Shall I continue or shall I leave it?

[Lord Faulks]

I think, with respect, you could come back to it if we get to that point.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for not having spoken at Second Reading. I was thinking that had this proposal come when we were debating the Children and Families Bill, there would have been uproar all around the House.

As has been said, we have to remember that 70% of young offenders have special educational needs and 20% are currently on what are called educational statements. The word “college” of course means education but the notion that you provide that educational support in what will in fact be Europe’s largest children’s prison is quite concerning, as is the notion that you put 12 year-olds with older youths and take them away from their support systems, their family and friends. We have not as yet decided what the education package is going to be. If it is going to be a genuine education package then there have to be educational psychologists, speech and language specialists and people dealing in mental health issues to make it really effective.

I have two real concerns. First, one of the amendments talks about younger children. There are moments in your professional life where certain events happen and they are almost life-changing in their impact. I remember clearly an 11 year-old boy who came to my school. They discovered that his mother’s partner had been in Winchester prison for child abuse. The boy was immediately taken away from his family and put in a secure children’s home. He was 11 and all the other young people in the home were 15 and 16. With the help of the local MP we got him out of the children’s home within, I think, three to four weeks. That boy had changed beyond belief. He had become a drug pusher; he did not want to support his family any more; he became abusive; he became a bully—all the sorts of things you do not want. That is my concern about putting young children into such institutions—and they are children. At the age of 12, 13 or 14, we are talking about children. The notion of putting children into this kind of institution is, to my mind, terrifying.

My second point is on the need for education support, which I have just mentioned. I recently went to visit a youth offending team on Merseyside comprising a very professional staff who are doing a tremendous job. The team’s concern is that currently it cannot even get information from schools to find out whether the young people concerned have statements or their educational assessments. We will have to pin down what the support provided in a secure college will be and what help is to be given.

I am very concerned about this proposal. If it is going to proceed, the important issues around age, the admittance of girls and of education provision have to be clearly spelt out. If this is about saving money, let us be honest and say so. If this is about a secure unit, let us be clear about that. But if the word “college” is going to be used and it is about supporting young people in their education and preventing reoffending, the issues that have been expressed in this debate have to be clearly and skilfully dealt with.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

With the leave of the Committee, I wonder whether I could try to complete what I was going to say, especially on Amendment 43C in this group.

The plan that a secure college should hold such a wide age group of 12 to 17 year-old boys and girls would seem inevitably to present enormous safeguarding risks. There are only ever very small numbers of girls in custody. Some 96% of those being held are boys aged between 15 and 17 years. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:

“We note that the Government does not appear to have carried out any equality impact assessments of the proposed secure colleges policy, and we recommend that such assessments should be carried out and made available to Parliament at the earliest opportunity”,

assessing in particular the impact on girls and younger children of detaining them in large, mixed institutions holding up to 320 young people, including older children up to the age of 18.

While it is true that secure training colleges and secure children’s homes have a mixture of ages and sexes, the crucial difference is that they consist of very small units that are usually close to the child’s home with lots of intensive, one-to-one support from well trained and highly qualified staff. That is something which is light years from anything a 320-bed secure unit is going to be able to offer. The real problem is that without any pilots and with very little information on how they will be run and staffed, and about what programmes will be on offer, far too much detail is missing. That makes a realistic assessment by anyone impossible to do. It is a completely inadequate basis, I would suggest, on which Parliament can either judge or give its approval. What we do know is that this is a vulnerable, needy and challenging group of offenders for whom the risk of reoffending is very high. The chances of their complex needs being met in an enormous institution are low at best. I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister has to tell us when he comes to reply and how he will meet so many profound concerns.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I shall share just a brief word, because I was unaware that we were going to be dealing with this clause. If we had been told that there are already minimum rules for restraint in existence, and bearing in mind strongly what has been said about the damage that would almost certainly have been done to these children over a number of years, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, stressed, then I think that it would be a really dangerous scenario to assume that what was described as two pain infliction methods would be the expected way of dealing with severely damaged children. They would be likely to be far more dangerously infected with these sorts of policies going into adulthood.

I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that an extremely careful look will be taken at whatever forms of restraint are to be used. The point made about properly trained staff, who know what they are doing, is crucial too.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

My Lords, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has found,

“that it is incompatible with Articles 3 and 8 ECHR for any law, whether primary or secondary legislation, to authorise the use of force on children and young people for the purposes of … discipline … we recommend that the relevant provision in Schedule 4 of the Bill should be deleted, and the Bill should be amended to make explicit that secure college rules can only authorise the use of reasonable force on children as a last resort; only for the purposes of preventing harm to the child or others; and that only the minimum force necessary should be used”.

The children and young people who are in custody are the most needy and difficult in the system, as we have already agreed, and present many and ongoing challenges. That is why it is so important that force is never, or extremely rarely, used. It is also why the experience and training of staff is paramount. I have seen expert, careful and skilled staff manage a potentially explosive situation and ensure that calm prevailed without any need to use force. It was most impressive.

Force tends only to provoke force and exacerbate situations in a distressing way. It also legitimises the use of force by staff and sends out the very same message to the young people, which, of course, is precisely the opposite of what is needed. That is why it is so important that we have much more detail on what the training, skills and experience of the staff who are likely to be employed in the secure college will be. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us an explanation and reassurance that special attention is going to be paid to this issue. An establishment of the scale planned by the Government is likely to create the most challenging environment that anybody working in this field will ever have had to deal with.

It appears that MoJ officials are planning to outline their expectation of when force can be used, but we urge that primary legislation remains the proper place to ensure proper safeguards. However, I understand that it is highly likely that the passage of this Bill will be completed before the final version of the rules is published, thus preventing parliamentary scrutiny. I hope the Minister can give some clarity on this.