Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I, too, support these amendments. They refer directly back to the important debate we had at the start of Committee, where we tried to address the overarching principles which inform, or should inform, the Bill. They here move from those basic principles to the purposes of sentencing, how the principles are translated into the sort of outcomes we seek, and the practical realities of how they are to be achieved. We come back once again to the central principle and purpose of the overarching welfare of the child, and its best interests being the primary—as the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, reminded us—consideration. Article 44 of the CRC requires that: "““A variety of dispositions, such as care, guidance and supervision orders; counselling; probation; foster care; education and vocational training programmes and other alternatives to institutional care shall be available to ensure that children are dealt with in a manner appropriate to their well-being and proportionate both to their circumstances and the offence””." That is the fuller quote of what I spoke to in the previous amendment. This articulates exactly the template—if you articulate templates—that we need to guide us through the outcomes we should be seeking for our children, which are, in turn, translated admirably into the amendment before us today. Ideally, I would prefer to swap subsections (2) and (3), putting ““welfare”” before ““proportionate response””, but I will not quibble with that. I am sure that all Members of the Committee would heartily agree with the concluding purposes of reform, rehabilitation, public protection and reparation by offenders. However, I know that the Government’s position is that punishment should form part of the menu of purposes; not only have they, as the Minister has today, said so clearly, it is the first of the list of purposes in the Bill. However, it is excluded from the amendment. I have listened carefully, and I am not surprised by what the distinguished noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has said about punishment, but I do not know that this is necessarily a forum for discussing something so huge and complex as what constitutes ““punishment””, what we mean by it and where it comes in a whole range of circumstances, although we must somehow try to nail a little of it in the Bill. The fact remains that it is largely because of the desire to deliver punishment, which could be characterised in this context as a frightening and unpleasant experience and how you ““learn your lesson””, that the alarming rise in child custody has taken place against a fall in offending. We also discussed that at length last night. Children and society are being further damaged; I do not think that there will be dispute over that. The key principles have been departed from. My experience of rigorous, systematic programmes of reparation and restoration are that they can be difficult, demanding and challenging for children, as well as unpleasant. However, they are also essentially constructive, which is perhaps the difference in this context between reparation, restoration and straight punishment. Punishment is essentially more negative. The punishment of prison is negative both in its application—by which I mean the rupturing of family, home, work or school—and the outcomes for reoffending, criminalising and so on. I declare an interest as I chair the Rethinking Crime and Punishment initiative—a modest little title—which has been looking at the use of custody and its alternatives in general, theoretical and practical terms over the past five years. In practical terms, we have been doing this in the Thames Valley, Cheshire and, shortly, in London. We have been developing a deeper level of engagement between judges and magistrates, and the programmes and community-based providers of alternatives in the community, including the offenders themselves. We have also been bringing local members of communities concerned into the choice and delivery of the sort of community reparation and restoration they would like to see. The results are very encouraging. We are developing, in certain ways, the Government’s community payback schemes but with the crucial difference that the sentencers—the people who actually make the decisions—are essentially part of the programme. The understanding we have seen develop has also led to some palpable changes in attitude to community penalties by both sentencers and communities. The amendment therefore moves us on from a relatively simplistic, knee-jerk recourse to punishment, to something which is not only more appropriate to children’s needs but, crucially, involves making good the damage done. It is a positive response. I am sure that those are the lessons we want all our children to learn. I would argue that we bring up our own children along those principles—not just giving them a really hefty wallop; although I have certainly been known to do that from time to time. Anyway, that is what we want for our young offenders. Finally, I firmly believe that the belief of politicians in particular, and also the press—whose views feed off each other with their mutual, essentially short-term, interests of holding on to a seat and selling tomorrow’s newspaper—do not represent the broad views of the public, which are far less retributive than they would have us believe. At RCP, we conducted our own poll through Mori which demonstrated that, and there has been a steady stream of similar polls in the past year or so. Most interestingly, last year, for the first time, there was a poll of the victims of crime. It was published by SmartJustice and showed, inter alia, that just under two-thirds did not believe that prison prevents offending and only 38 per cent supported the building of more prisons. What everybody wants above all is that the offender does not do it again—here I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. We all know that prison cannot achieve that, most especially with children, but that community interventions can and do. However, the fact still remains, as we discussed at some length on our first day in Committee, that the current purposes of sentencing are failing to an enormous extent. This amendment represents an important building block in the changes that we need to see.