Young Offenders

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Streeter. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing this debate and on an outstanding analysis of the current issues. All hon. Members who have spoken have taken that lead, and I am pleased to see a growing consensus that youth criminality is a result of multiple vulnerabilities and failures in the individual and in society. I share the concern expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) that if the cuts to youth justice funding that we anticipate go ahead on the scale that is promised, we risk not addressing those failures. I will return to that point.

The previous Labour Government had a properly funded, multi-agency approach to youth offending. It included youth offending teams, which have been a real success story; the Youth Justice Board, which uses an evidence-based approach to disseminating best practice; the introduction of alternative disposal orders; and the recognition that intervening early is far better than trying to manage a child who has already become embroiled in criminality.

As a result, the youth justice system of today is radically different from that of the past. During the previous Parliament, the Government’s approach to prevention saw a significant drop in the number of first-time young offenders, from 170,040 in 2005 to 61,387 in our last year in government. Recent statistics show that the number of offences committed by young offenders dropped from 301,860 in 2005 to 198,449 last year—a drop of 35%. In the past two years alone, the under-18 prison population has dropped from 2,932 to 2,045—a drop of 30%. Those remarkable figures are possible only because of the good work of the Youth Justice Board, of YOTs around the country and of those third sector and social enterprise front-line providers that have given so many options and provided valuable data to inform an evidence-driven approach to drive down youth offending. We all want better outcomes for our young people.

Some years ago, I worked as a criminal barrister and represented young offenders. It was clear to me then, as now, that many young offenders are themselves profoundly vulnerable, a point which was made well by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. That is true not only in respect of their immaturity or youth, but because many are disadvantaged socially and educationally and suffer a wide range of impairments and emotional difficulties. Mental health issues are three times as prevalent among children in the youth justice system than in the general population.

Studies over the past few years show that between 40% and 50% of children in the youth justice system have emotional or mental health issues. A study of youth offenders found that 23% had an IQ under 70, and 36% an IQ under 80. As has been mentioned, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists found that 60% of children in the criminal justice system have a communication disability, and of that group, half have poor or very poor communication skills.

Some of those indicators are a result of deprivation, while others are clinical issues that need to be dealt with through appropriate interventions. They are not just drivers of offending or reoffending. The inability to deal with a complex and highly verbal youth justice system has driven many young people to act out, self-harm or worse. There may be a declining number of the most serious incidents and cases of self-harm that lead to death in custody, but each incident is a tragedy and, where it is preventable, we have a duty to act.

Hon. Members have mentioned some of the tools used to identify vulnerabilities found in young people in the criminal justice system. Asset, the Youth Justice Board’s tool for classifying young people and identifying vulnerabilities, has been rightly identified as lacking a suitable mechanism for isolating speech and language deficits. I am pleased, therefore, that when giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee in January, the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board, John Drew, confirmed that a complete review of Asset is being undertaken to find a way to integrate speech and language components. In 2009, the previous Government commissioned a review of the entire YOT assessment, planning and supervision framework, which has been at work since January 2010.

Reviewing Asset is not the only way in which communication impairment should be taken into account. Two weeks ago, I was in Milton Keynes at the Oakhill secure training centre. Among others, I met Diz Minnitt, the speech and language portfolio holder for the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers and operational manager for the Milton Keynes youth offending team. They are at the forefront of the use of speech and language therapists, and they have an exceptional practice, focusing on prevention. They have halved the number of first-time entrants to the system in the past five years, and they have reduced the need for custodial disposals, far outstripping the national and regional rates of reduction.

There is a great deal of argument about what drives down crime, but I am firmly of the view that dealing with difficulties such as speech and language problems, so that young people can fully engage with deterrence and offender management programmes, is a big component of driving down first-time offending and reoffending. But here we come to the problem—future funding. We know that the Ministry of Justice faces one of the biggest cuts of any Department—23%—but I saw in Children & Young People Now magazine today that John Drew has said that the Youth Justice Board is preparing to distribute 29% less in Government funding to YOTs compared with last year. He is quoted as saying:

“There are a couple of YOTs saying it is going to be exceptionally difficult to maintain a basic YOT…Inevitably it will mean fewer resources on the ground to discharge a range of responses.”

He concludes that

“it will be really difficult to have as much success as we have enjoyed over the last two to three years”.

It is not just YOTs that are affected. Kamini Gadhok, chief executive of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, has said:

“News of cuts being made to speech and language therapy services in YOIs”—

young offenders institutions—

“is a deeply disturbing and regressive policy. Communication is an essential skill that is vital for the rehabilitation of offenders.

The delivery of speech and language therapy has been shown to reduce reoffending rates by as much as 50 per cent, which in turn reduces costs to the taxpayer.”

The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys may confirm from his visit to Hindley what I believe is the case there—that the only full-time speech and language therapist post is being scrapped, which is a retrogressive step. The Minister needs to deal with that point when he responds for the Government. We have some excellent schemes throughout the country, but they are under threat. What will the Government do to ensure that they are at least preserved, if not enhanced, over the next few years?

The third sector, social enterprises, YOTs and the secure estate are all under pressure from sharply declining central and local revenues. If there is a massive contraction of youth justice funding, it may lead to a decline in the system’s efficacy, a rise in crime and the failure of schemes that, if fully funded, would probably have succeeded. If a scheme can reduce first-time offending, reduce reoffending, reduce the prison population and reduce our expenditure, should we really be reducing that scheme? That is the lesson from the report published today by the community or custody inquiry, although it does not deal exclusively with youth justice. A very high-powered panel concludes that some of the existing innovative schemes for intensive community punishments as alternatives to custody may be at risk, let alone the expansion in such schemes that the Government wish to see.

I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber agree that we do not want more children slipping through the net and being condemned to spiral down within the criminal justice system. Those who have been involved with youth justice for some time will know that we have been here before. I shall quote a passage from Hansard from 18 years ago, almost to the day. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who as Home Secretary was responsible for youth justice then as he is again now as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, was defending himself against an attack by the then hon. Member for Sedgefield, the shadow Home Secretary. Following that, the then hon. Member for Lewisham, East read to him a letter written by a youth worker in Lewisham:

“‘I find it at least ironic and at worst callously indifferent to hear members of the Government and Ministers bemoaning the lack of social responsibility among young people and expressing concerns about juvenile crime, when the consequence of their policies on local government spending is that something as worth while as the Young Lewisham project is forced to close.’”—[Official Report, 2 March 1993; Vol. 220, c. 148.]

I fear that many more letters like that will be written because of the cuts, not just in MOJ funding but in local government funding and in other areas. Although the aims of the justice Green Paper are commendable in many respects, ruthless spending cuts will lead to a diminution of capacity and systemic failures and undermine the very sensible case that the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys and other right hon. and hon. Members have advocated today. I fear that if those cuts are combined with the cuts referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham in Sure Start, youth clubs and the education maintenance allowance, our most vulnerable young people face a bleak future.