Young Offenders: Sentencing Guidelines

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Lord is right. We have debated this over many years in both Houses of this Parliament. This is one of the key recommendations which the Government have accepted and taken on board in putting the education, training and healthcare of these children and young people at the heart of developing pilot secure schools, for example, where these children will have education and training. There has also to be a focus on the benefits system to ensure that we encourage and incentivise them not to reoffend.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

If we have to have custodial sentences—I am sure that in many cases they are appropriate and mine was certainly one of them—would it not be good if people who go in bad came out better? Is it possible for us to review the kind of institutions that we have and probably return to the good old days of what was called the reformatory system—the approved schools system—where people were got hold of, transformed, educated and brought back into society so that they did not become recidivists?

[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Lord speaks with great passion about this. I have experience of it from going into the old what we called borstals and so on, and realising that for those children—perhaps the noble Lord was one of them—the future was bleak. I am pleased to say that, for example, in 2015 only some 6% of children and young people were sentenced to immediate custody. The system has changed and is changing. We are making progress and we want to make it better because we appreciate, through vast experience, that we have not done enough to date for our children and young people.