Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I strongly support the amendment. I shall not repeat what I have already said about this matter, but shall take this opportunity to welcome strongly the measures in the first part of the Bill to provide proper community sanctions so that children can be kept out of custody more than they have been in the past. I note what the Minister said about a static period, but can he say a bit more about the trend? I understand there was a rising trend, then a static period and then it began to rise again more recently. Has that rise now settled? There are a number of points to make about this. I think I am correct in saying that there has not been a death in a local authority secure unit. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that. If one can reduce the population within the custodial centre, one can concentrate on quality. One could make centres local and concentrate on having the best training and support for staff and really use custody effectively. Currently, there is overcrowding, so there is a high level of churn. That means it is difficult to establish relationships between the young people and the custody officers, which means that a heavy use of force is needed to keep them under control. Again and again I hear from people working in these places that relationships are crucial to managing behaviour, but they cannot be established. We now have a call from the Prison Officers’ Association for prison officers to be allowed to carry batons in these settings. There are so many good reasons to wish to move in this direction. Before I finish, I want to emphasise the huge cost to the public of locking up all these children. How much better that money might be spent on the community sanctions that the noble Lord is proposing. I hope that the Minister can give a sympathetic reply to the amendment.