Disclosure of Youth Criminal Records

Debate between Marie Rimmer and David Lammy

Thursday 28th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

Let me begin by emphasising two guiding principles for the United Kingdom’s judiciary. The first is:

“It shall be the principal aim of the youth justice system to prevent offending by children and young persons.”

The second is:

“Every court in dealing with a child…shall have regard to the welfare of the child.”

I do not believe that a single hon. Member present would disagree with those principles.

The Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report acknowledges the over-representation of BAME and looked-after children. Since my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who has superior knowledge, has already spoken about the incredibly important issue of the over-representation of BAME children in the youth justice system, I will focus on the issues that the Committee raised about discrimination against looked-after children in the judicial system. The sum of the Government’s response to the discrimination against those children is acknowledgment but nothing else. As for children with mental health issues or issues such as autism, they appear, sadly, to have been forgotten in the Government’s response, as they have been in the Government’s justice policy. I do not believe that that is acceptable.

Looked-after children in care are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. They have been removed from their homes because life there is no longer beneficial or safe for them, and many have been abused physically or mentally—often both. It is difficult for adults to come to terms with abuse, but for children it can often be impossible to understand what has happened to them and how they feel. It is often those who are closest and most trusted by these children who commit these abuses. These young people deserve care and understanding, but unfortunately the current system of disclosure of youth criminal records does not deliver that.

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising such an important point. I declare an interest as the father of a formerly looked-after child. Does my hon. Friend agree that the phrase “looked-after” is one of the biggest oxymorons in our language? Of all the cohorts of young people we have discussed this afternoon, none makes as great a case for changing the criminal records regime as those children, who have been let down the most often—not just by their original parents, but by the state.

[Ms Rimmer]

I agree absolutely. I feel very passionate about this. “Looked-after children” are the most abused and ignored in our society, and they continue to suffer throughout life.

The Criminal Justice Alliance told our Committee that children in care are far more often criminalised than those in family homes. In family homes, minor infringements and indiscretions are dealt with in the home, but children in care do not have such a readily available support system. The records system does not provide context for the young person’s actions, nor does it distinguish between severity of crimes. Just for Kids Law cited the case of a nine-year-old who had been physically abused and transferred to a care home, where he would frequently react badly and assault members of staff because of the high levels of abuse that he had suffered as a child. With help, he managed to do well at the home and when he was moved into foster care, but the charges of common assault against staff that he received during that traumatic time will follow him for years—a constant reminder of the abuse that he suffered and an additional barrier to flourishing as an adult, along with the many other barriers that looked-after children face. He is likely to face difficulties in work, education and social housing applications because of his record.

The impact that a caution can have in later life is often not explained to children. Convictions are often for offences that sound relatively serious, even when the behaviour is at a relatively low level. Just for Kids Law told us that children often focus on the fact that they are receiving a caution rather than on the category of offence. In some cases, for example, children have accepted cautions for non-filterable offences of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, whereas if their case had gone to court, it would have received greater scrutiny and they would have been far more likely to face a charge of common assault. Such cautions will limit people’s access to the job market, because a simple yes/no tick-box is often all the opportunity they will have to state their case in an application, and DBS checks will not provide the full context of their conviction. Barred from employment, many will find their options limited and may be pushed into reoffending in adulthood.

The issue extends to children with mental health issues or issues such as autism or post-traumatic stress disorder, who can struggle to understand what is being said to them or the ramifications of what they are agreeing to. Children with dyslexia may struggle even to read the documents placed in front of them. The director of CRB Problems gave us the example of a person who suffered from autism and entered the judicial system at a time when we did not provide the help or care that we do today and when support was hardly available at all. He received two convictions that cannot be filtered under current rules—a failure of our past system and a failure in how the disclosure of youth criminal records works today.

That example highlights a key problem with the disclosure of youth criminal records: it holds people prisoner to the understanding that we had in the past. People who might be treated with more compassion and understanding as a child today are held to a different standard as adults. I am not talking just about people charged five to 10 years ago, but about people who were charged as far back as the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s. In those days, our understanding of the issues that children with mental health issues face was miles behind what it is today, as we know from the National Police Chiefs Council’s evidence on the policing of children and young people.

For all those reasons, it is important for the Government not just to acknowledge the findings and recommendations in the Justice Committee’s report on the disclosure of youth criminal records, but to act on them. I am sure that Ministers will stand up and argue that they have taken action, but I will pre-emptively respond by quoting from the written evidence submitted by the Greater Manchester Youth Justice University Partnership. Statement 3, on “The effects of reforms made in 2013 and 2014”, reads:

“Available evidence suggests that recent reforms have not had a significant impact.”

To put it plainly, we need to be doing far more.

I conclude by going back to the two guiding principles in our judicial system that I set out at the beginning of my speech: that the principal aim of the youth justice system is to prevent offending by children and young people, and that every court that deals with a child must have regard to the child’s welfare. Along with our report and with the many people and organisations that provided evidence, I argue that we are not meeting those two principles in how our youth disclosure system works, particularly for children with mental health issues and for children who are or have been looked after. Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I am not saying that to accuse the Government or score political points, but to implore the Government to work with us and other key organisations to deliver the reforms that are needed now, not in a few years’ time—reforms that would bring dramatic and meaningful change for some of the most vulnerable people in society.