Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I shall refer to this excellent brief from the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which shows that rehabilitation cannot be what the Government are achieving. Eight out of 10 children reoffend. We lock up 23 per 100,000; the Finns lock up one-fifth of one child per 100,000. Clear-up rates have been stable since 1995 and 42 per cent fewer people report being victims of crime. However, while 100 under-15s were convicted and sent to prison in 2002, that number has increased to more than 800, only 50 of whom were serious offenders. What on earth is the point of sending another 650 children to the nick, when it seems to have had no effect whatever on recidivism rates and has made absolutely certain that, of those 650, only 120 will not reoffend. This cannot put the interests of the children at heart but those of tabloid headline writers. Of course one concedes that children can be toerags and disgusting. My late mother said that when I was 15 I entered the ““awkward age””—or rather, as she had some pretension, ““l’age bête””—and until the day she died aged 75 she never conceded that I had left it. We cannot leave the point that there are little horrors about, but they need more care and attention to try to stop them being little horrors. This should be put in the Bill and with a glad heart, I support my noble friend—I say that advisedly—Lady Stern.