Police Cautions (Young People)

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, I think for the first time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) not only on securing the debate, but on his admirable and in my experience unprecedented brevity in not filling up the entire time available to him. I appreciate his interest not only generally, as a member of the Justice Committee, which has indeed pronounced on the matter recently, but particularly, in the individual case that brought the issue to his attention. I will deal with that later in my speech.

On the generalities, the youth justice system is focused on early intervention and on diversion of children and young people from formal disposals where that is appropriate. In recent times, there has been an increase in the use of informal disposals by the police and an adoption of restorative justice approaches, which I strongly support. All police forces now have trained restorative justice facilitators, and an on-the-spot restorative action can often provide the best disposal when a minor, usually first-time misdemeanour is committed. Such an approach can also be beneficial to the victim, who gets immediate reparation from the young person who has committed the offence. There has been a significant reduction in the use of formal disposals by the police over recent years. Since 2001-02, there has been a 57% fall in the number of reprimands, final warnings and conditional cautions given to young people in England and Wales: 40,757 were given in 2011-12, compared with 94,836 in 2001-02.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on his contribution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) made a good intervention, which I support absolutely. People in inner city areas such as the one that I represent, and in particular minority ethnic youths in those areas, seem to have a disproportionately high chance of being stopped and searched, of getting formal cautions and therefore of being impeded in getting work in the future. Will the Minister look into the geographical breakdown of the cautions given and the operational guidance given to police forces? I, of course, support the much earlier write-off of cautions to preserve the career opportunities of all our young people.

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman might be aware that we are conducting a cautions review at the moment, so feeding into that is important. As I am about to explain in detail, we are concerned to encourage the use of out-of-court disposals but to ensure that, first, the length of time for which they are active beyond the period of the commission of the offence is properly limited and that, at the same time, they provide confidence in the wider justice system and in particular a feeling among victims that appropriate reparation has been made. That is the balance to be struck.