Youth Crime and Anti-social Behaviour

Lord Imbert Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Imbert]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Judd, in this all-too-short debate on a subject that has been a major cause of concern for a very long time. How do we minimise the harm that the anti-social and criminal behaviour of young people causes to themselves and to the wider community? As the commission said in its excellent report, appropriately entitled Time for a Fresh Start:

“The current response to antisocial and criminal behaviour by children and young people is too often characterised by confused accountability, risk aversion and excessive bureaucracy, with limited room for individual discretion and professional judgement”.

In short, our response to anti-social and criminal behaviour by these young people is just not working.

My noble friend Lord Ramsbotham gave evidence to the independent commission and wisely said that the three things to prevent people reoffending are a proper home, a job and stable relationships. I would add a basic education to that list. Many of those who enter the treadmill of prison reoffend and do not have any of those advantages. We can but hope the Government will examine the matter more thoroughly.

Incarcerating these young offenders has not reduced their reoffending rates. Indeed, it is the view of many that prison has too often become the starting block for those who have then embarked on a criminal career. I accept what the Secretary of State for Justice says: that we lock up too many young people with no good result. But I only partly agree with him, because, sadly, we must acknowledge that there are some young criminals who, because of the nature of their crimes and the need to protect highly vulnerable members of the community must, unfortunately, be put for a time where they can no longer do harm to themselves and others.

But if prison does not work and reoffending rates remain unacceptably high, what else can we do to protect the public, give satisfaction to the victim and make it possible for the offender genuinely to change his or her ways and become an acceptable and useful member of the community?

Many years ago, the “short, sharp shock” was introduced and, like others, I thought it was the answer to those young villains. I was wrong; it did not work and neither did much else. We have had ASBOs, which the new Home Secretary has announced will be replaced by criminal behaviour orders. Let us hope that they are more successful than the often abused ASBO, but what if none of those work?

There is another way forward. Many of your Lordships will be familiar with the concept of restorative justice, as mentioned at length in the report. We have to accept that there are differing views on whether or how well that method works, much depending on one’s experience and knowledge of cases which have been dealt with by it. We have often heard that the criminal justice system favours the offender and ignores or fails to understand the hurt and fear suffered by the victims. Restorative justice is a victim-focused resolution to a crime or incident which, with the victim’s agreement and, more often, their participation, will see young people held properly to account for their criminal and anti-social acts.

In this way, restorative justice is about putting the victim’s wishes and expectations first, when the officer dealing with the incident has the discretion to offer the victim the opportunity for the crime to be dealt with through a process of mediation and conferencing whereby, in a properly supervised and appropriate case, the offender is faced by the victim, who has the opportunity to put his or her case to the miscreant and show the hurt and damage he or she has suffered. That gives victims a strong voice, which increases their satisfaction with how their crime is dealt with.

Let me give your Lordships a short example of how this is done, which came to me from the Greater Manchester Police. A boy stole a quantity of chocolate from a shop. He was seen to do so by the staff and his act was captured on close-circuit television. The film was taken to the local high school, where the offender was easily identified. Police then informed the shopkeeper of this. He did not want the youth taken to court and prosecuted for the offence but he did want some action: for the boy to be advised and to understand his wrongdoing. The restorative conferencing system was explained to the shopkeeper and he agreed to a meeting. At the conference, the shopkeeper pointed out to the boy that the sale of goods was his own livelihood—the only way he made his living, and his full-time job. The boy said that he had not realised or thought about that before and both he and his parents apologised, the parents paying the shopkeeper the money for the chocolate. The shopkeeper was satisfied with that outcome and the boy and his parents said that it would never happen again.

I am informed by the Greater Manchester Police that the whole process, from start to finish, took just 2 hours and 20 minutes. No expensive and lengthy court hearing took place, which would have meant the shopkeeper, a member of his staff, the teacher who had identified the offender from a close-circuit television picture and the police officer spending a day, or maybe more, in court. The boy, who showed contrition, was not put on the first rung of a criminal record at that point in his life, when still learning how to behave in a civilised and acceptable way. I urge the Government to examine the process of restorative justice deeply and thoroughly. Done successfully, that will not only save the country money but, most importantly, offer the best chance yet of reducing the high reoffending rates of young people.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, looking around the Room I see many familiar faces. There is sometimes a feeling in these debates that we are a kind of exclusive brethren who espouse some odd ideas. Yet what has come out of this is the hard-headed practicality that I think the noble Lord, Lord Bach, referred to. One encouragement is that today I have received a pamphlet from the CBI, Action in the Community: Reforming the Probation Service to reduce Reoffending. The covering letter quite rightly said that as taxpayers and corporate citizens, businesses have a substantial interest in seeing the rate of reoffending cut. That is the argument that reformers have put consistently. To tackle these issues is not some kind of woolly liberalism but cold, hard common sense. Our approach will do far more, even if you do not want to indulge in any of the moral or social arguments for reform, as it works on the cold, hard balance sheet for the taxpayer. If we can achieve success in what we are trying to do, there will be real savings in money spent on this area.

As regards the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, I believe that spiritually we will always be on the same side and I have no problems with that. However, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, commented properly on what we are addressing. A proper home, a job, stable relationships and, as he rightly said, basic education are part of the mix that avoids offending and reoffending. As I have said on a number of occasions, you do not need to be in this job very long before you see those factors coming up time and again. It is not an endless list but actually a very short list of factors which seem to come into play. I fully appreciate that and I hope that the Government have already indicated that this report has influenced our Green Paper and will also affect our response to it.

As we have a very short time, I will not return to the debate on the Youth Justice Board. I am sure we will do so at some stage, but we had a very good debate that rehearsed many of the arguments. I will only repeat that we have no intention of dismantling the youth justice system that has been established over recent years. The youth offending teams, with their holistic approach, will be retained and our approach will put more responsibility where we think it should be—with local authorities.

I shall comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about SkillForce. I have had a bee in my bonnet for some time that we underuse our ex-servicemen in this area. I went to a school in Bolton a couple of years ago where I was shown round and reached the cookery class, which was run by an ex-Army cook. There were more boys than girls in the class, quite voluntarily, because the boys liked him and his rather muscular approach to cookery, and he connected with the kids. Sometimes ways of dealing with young people might be better done by somebody, for example, who has had the life experience that Army service gives rather than university or other skill training. I certainly want to take that idea back.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, rightly raised the question of custody for young people and we are clear that custody would be used for under-18s only as a last resort. We are pleased that the number of young people in custody has fallen by around 30 per cent in the past two years. We recognise that although there has been a reduction in custodial sentences for young people, the number of those remanded remains high. We have brought forward proposals in the Green Paper to address the use of custodial remand for young people. The introduction of the youth rehabilitation order at the end of last year has created a robust alternative to custody. The YRO has a menu of 18 potential requirements and two of those are high intensive alternatives to custody: intensive supervision and surveillance; and intensive fostering.

The noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Ramsbotham, both referred to young offender academies, and I know of the espousal of the cause by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. The young offender academy is an innovative model. However, as the latest report from the Foyer Foundation recognises, building new custodial establishments for young people is not an option at this time of financial constraint. We recognise that effective resettlement of young people leaving the youth justice system is absolutely critical to breaking the cycle of reoffending. We want to see local services taking a greater role in the rehabilitation and resettlement of young offenders which would help them to better manage their transition back into the community and reduce their chances of reoffending. We are clear that organisations such as Foyer working with local authorities have a role to play.

Let me make it clear that preventing crime and anti-social behaviour by young people is a key priority for the Government. Our approach is to focus on tackling the risk factors that can lead to youth offending, improving the effectiveness of sentencing and strengthening community engagement. The Home Office is providing up to £20 million towards the early intervention grant which local areas can use for crime prevention and up to £18 million for youth offending teams to deliver front-line work, including knife crime prevention programmes. On 2 February, the Home Secretary announced further funding worth more than £18 million over the next 2 years to tackle youth knife, gun and gang crime. It includes £10 million for preventive and diversionary activities through the Positive Futures programme. This is a national prevention programme that targets and supports 10 to19-year olds who are on the cusp of, or who have desisted from, offending and helps them to move forward with their lives.

We want to increase the role of the community in tackling youth crime and anti-social behaviour at local level, including ensuring that young people have a strong voice and can influence neighbourhood priorities. We have published our intention to introduce a new remand order for under-18s that will simplify the system, and make local authorities, gradually and with support, responsible for the full cost of youth remand. This will reverse the perverse incentive that currently exists whereby a local authority can benefit financially when one of its young people is placed in custody. We also intend to amend the Bail Act 1976 to remove the option of remand for young people who would be unlikely to receive custodial sentences.

The Government are also in agreement with the commission that there is still not enough emphasis placed on the importance of young offenders facing the consequences of their actions and paying back to society, and especially to victims, for the harm they have caused. Using restorative justice approaches, which were referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Imbert and Lord Dholakia, and a number of other colleagues, is a crucial element of this. We fully support the principles of restorative justice in bringing together those who have a stake in a conflict collectively to resolve it, both as an alternative to the criminal justice system and as an addition to it. Restorative justice is already a key part of youth justice and we want to encourage this across the youth justice sentencing framework.

The Government are also clear that in order to make real progress in reducing reoffending and protecting the public, we must look to do more to address the factors that cause the individuals to offend—the holistic approach advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. A radical way in which we can achieve this is to free up professionals, and involve a wider range of partners from the private and voluntary sectors to take innovative approaches to dealing with offenders. I hope that the pamphlet from the CBI is an indication that we can engage the business community in this in a positive way.

Where a custodial sentence is appropriate for a young person, we must ensure that, having served it, they are resettled effectively to prevent further reoffending. Many of these vulnerable young people have no home, school or job waiting for them. Without the right support, many will reoffend or return to the gang culture referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey.

The proposals that we set out in our Green Paper seek fundamentally to change the incentive structure around resettlement. We want to ensure that local authorities take full responsibility for ensuring young people leaving custody do not return there, and incentivise work such as the resettlement consortia around the Hindley youth offenders institution in the north-west and Ashfield YOI in the south-west.

So many points have been raised with such experience from around the Room that one knows this debate could have gone on for much longer. We would have benefited from interventions from the likes of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, who was with us, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. Like the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I agree that many of the solutions have been around for a long time. What is needed is the political will to deliver. Perhaps we are at one of those moments when we can change the climate of the national debate away from that tabloid-driven hysteria to which the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, referred to the kind of constructive solutions put forward in the debate today and by this report. The noble Baroness asked what happens next. What happens next is that we will respond in May to the consultation initiated by our Green Paper. But this report, this debate and much of the thinking behind it will, I hope, constructively colour the nature of that response.

[Lord Imbert]

Before the Minister sits down, perhaps I may make an apology for having failed to declare an interest. As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, said, this excellent report was instigated by the Police Foundation, which is an independent think-tank dedicated to improving policing for the benefit of the public. I should have declared an interest in that I have been a member of the Police Foundation since it was formed by the late Lord Harris of Greenwich more than 20 years ago.

[Lord McNally]

I think that we can accept both that apology and that superb advert for the work of the Police Foundation.