Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 5: 5: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— ““Custody of children: conditions to be met A court must not pass a custodial sentence unless— (a) the offender has already been the subject of a youth rehabilitation order, or orders, which falls within section 1(3), or (b) the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it, was so serious that, notwithstanding the age of the offender, a youth rehabilitation order which falls within section 1(3) cannot be justified for the offence.”” The noble Earl said: We now arrive at the question of custody thresholds. I am moving this amendment because I have the privilege to be on the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, and I have been on it longer than some of the other noble Lords. I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who used to be a pillar of the committee, has put his name to the amendment, and I speak with the background of the JCHR brief. Your Lordships will know that it is not exactly a committee packed with Conservatives. Basically, it consists of people who seem to be interested in, and are keen to protect, the rights of the subject. Some of us come to it from an old-fashioned, right-wing view that the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and all those lovely historical liberties of the subject should be upheld at all costs; others come to it from a slightly more left-wing, human rights angle and the Tom Paine tradition. However, on this issue we are unanimous. I shall quote from a particularly interesting part of our report. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child came over here to see how we were doing and issued a report in 2002, which said that it was, "““deeply concerned at the … increasing numbers of children in custody, at earlier ages for lesser offences, and for longer custodial sentence imposed by the recent increased court powers to give detention and training orders. Therefore, it is the concern of the Committee that deprivation of liberty is not being used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time, in violation””—" I repeat, ““in violation””— "““of Article 37(b)””." I underline the fact that this was in 2002 because in 2003 approximately 1,400 children under the age of 18 were in custody in England and Wales. That number more than doubled over five years, with a 110 per cent increase, from 1,405 in 2002 to 3,000. The number of children under the age of 15 in custody has increased even more dramatically—by 700 per cent, as I explained earlier—from 100 to more than 800, with only 50 being serious cases. That increase has been driven by government legislation and the sentencing climate. Over the same period, indictable offences have dropped by 20 per cent, and that is no artificial change. The rates have been stable since 1995 and 42 per cent fewer people report being crime victims. I also said earlier that the figures for this country were 23 per 100,000 and, for the Finns, 0.02. Just for fun, I shall put France down as six and Spain at two. That shows that something has gone wrong in the use of custody thresholds and we think that that needs to be addressed seriously. Everyone agrees that children can be very unpleasant on occasion, and we have recently read in the newspapers of sentences for children who behave in a very repellent manner, but it is more important than anything else to get at those children. One does not defend the public by getting at those children, but one does defend the public and act for the good of public safety by ensuring that proper rehabilitation of the disgusting, as well as of the less disgusting, is carried out. I think we are all saying that the use of custody is just not working and, if it does not work, that is immoral. Therefore, we should ensure that everything else is tried before custody is used and that should be in the Bill. I beg to move.