Offender Management Bill

Clause 30 is designed to remove the requirement that children given a DTO by the court—which means that the child is a persistent offender, and if they were older they would be looking at a custodial sentence—should serve that sentence in a secure setting such as an STC or a YOI. Instead, they could be placed in some other form of ““youth detention accommodation””. That could be an open local authority residential home or some other accommodation as specified by order. The amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, seek to modify the requirements specified in the Bill for accommodation, "““of an appropriate secure nature given the individual’s circumstances””." That is, of course, the ideal. The Government are moving towards a position which appears to acknowledge that the use of STCs or YOIs need not necessarily be appropriate andto that extent we welcome their thinking. However, this begs a lot of questions. ““Youth detention accommodation”” is so vague and imprecise as to be almost meaningless and requires a great deal more explanation and detail. For example, there is no indication of the extent to which a child’s best interests are to be considered at the outset or whether a full assessment of need or risk is to be taken first—both absolutely essential for an appropriate placement. Will there be a clear statement in law that the purpose of sentencing is to improve the well-being of the child and to prepare him for later life? What sort of number are the Government anticipating and therefore what number of alternative settings and places is to be made available? Above all, what will the non-secure detention accommodation be? What will it offer? What kind of specialist provision will be available? And behind all this is the question, ““Is it a cost-cutting exercise?””. To do things properly, all that will have to be spelled out. One of the anxieties expressed by several organisations, including the Magistrates’ Association, is whether children who have been involved in criminal or offending behaviour could be placed in residential children’s homes—open or secure—with children whose needs are quite different, though just as great, but who might be significantly and adversely affected by being with such children. What the Government are proposing, however, is potentially very important. I for one have argued long and hard against the incarceration of children, particularly very young children, in STCs—the child prisons which are a unique feature of this Government and widely condemned elsewhere in Europe. Four hundred miles up the road from here in Scotland, they do not exist and there are no plans to emulate them. The appetite for incarcerating children is growing. The number of under-18s in custody is almost 60 per cent higher than it was in the 1990s, the number of children in YOIs assessed as ““vulnerable”” rose from 432 in 2001-02 to 3,337 in 2003-04, and the levels of self-harm in STCs rose by 803 per cent between 2001 and 2004. Most ghastly of all, three children have actually died in STCs, one at the hands of staff while being restrained using a practice called a double-seated embrace, which has now been forbidden pending a better understanding of the physiology of children and what restraints can be more appropriately used. If ever there was a need to change our treatment of these extremely difficult children, it is now, but is what the Government are offering a real opportunity—a real shift in thinking and practice? To provide more appropriately for these extremely vulnerable, disturbed, difficult and dysfunctional children we need to have a range of appropriate alternatives and I am not aware of any such plans. We need to reverse the recent trend for closing secure and semi-secure local authority children's homes, someof which have been deemed to be too small or performing inadequately. With government help, and with the diversion perhaps of funds from children’s prisons, change and improvement would be perfectly possible. If greater powers and responsibilities were given to local authorities—as in Scotland—rather than to the YJB, which commissions all these prison places, and if there were a duty of care through the Every Child Matters agenda and the children's trusts, then appropriate local provision could be put in place. As it is, a third of children in YOIs are identified as ““vulnerable”” and their needs dictate that local authority provision is more appropriate. We need far more secure or semi-secure children's homes, ideally ones where there can be a progression from secure to open conditions as the child progresses; more specialised provision such as therapeutic communities for very vulnerable children at risk of suicide—we were discussing one such case at Question Time today and there have been 29 deaths since the 1990s—residential special schools for those with additional learning difficulties, and there are many such children in our prisons; mental health settings; and above all places where children can be near home instead of 50 miles or more away. This last suggestion mirrors the recommendations of the Corston report on women in prisons and, while it is not relevant to this amendment, the needs are in many ways similar. If the Government were committed to providing a fraction of this, it would be the best possible legacy they could leave this country. But to do so in a token fashion, or without adequate care and planning—for example, the inappropriate placing together of children—would be a tragedy. Can the Minister therefore give the House a clearer idea of what the Government mean by ““youth detention accommodation””; and say what alternative provision they will make and when, and what sort of resources they are prepared to allocate to such important provision?