Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Perhaps I may refer to a few of the questions that were raised before I come on to the Government’s view of the specific issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, referred to the downward use of custodial sentencing, which I think is the equivalent of my up-sentencing. We understand what we mean. I just want to stress that this is not the aim. This is about ensuring custody is indeed the last resort. That is why, in the earlier part of the Bill, so much emphasis is put on the YROs. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred once again to the very important question of restraint. As I said earlier this afternoon—it seems many hours ago now—the review that has been commissioned is due to report in April. I hope that will inform the development of a sensible and helpful policy. We will have to see what the review says. The noble Earl also asked about deaths in custody. I am very happy to circulate the details that I have. I cannot answer the question, raised I think by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, about women. I will try to find that information. We have another happy debate only a few hours ahead in relation to the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, and I have no doubt that that is one of the matters that we will discuss. On the noble Earl’s specific question, every death is a personal tragedy. My understanding is there was one death at Hillside SCH in 1998. I will let him have details of that of course. I also want to provide the figures on young people in custody and the question of whether we are in a stable position. My understanding is that on 30 June 1997, there were 2,479 under-18s in custody. In October 2002 it had gone up to 2,735. The figure for June 2007, which is the latest I have, is 2,426. It is on that basis that I used the word stabilisation earlier. The YJB disposal data published for 2006-07 show that total disposals in that year were 216,000: pre-court were just over 96,000; first tier 73,000; community 39,700 and custody 7,097. The difference is that the figures I gave earlier were the number of people in custody at one point, whereas the latter figures are about the number of disposals during the calendar year. Noble Lords will interpret those figures, but it does put this into perspective. I will also comment on another interesting question the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has raised about the 1982 Act. There was undoubtedly a significant drop in the use of immediate custody between those years for indictable offences for under-21s. This coincided with a corresponding increase in repeat cautioning for offenders, particularly the group aged 17 to 21. For instance, the number of males cautioned for an indictable offence in 1980 was 3,200 and that had risen to 22,500 by 1990. My understanding is that repeat cautioning for indictable offences was deemed not acceptable by the then Government which was why they reversed the position. That is the background to some of the very interesting questions—