Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I, too, most wholeheartedly support this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Thomas, requiring as it does that, before a court imposes a sentence of custody on a child, all alternative local authority service provision has been considered with a view to avoiding custody whenever possible. Not only is this necessary and desirable in terms of the individual needs and welfare of children, it is fundamentally humane. It also clarifies what is available to the court. Pre-sentence reports are, or should be, a vital tool in the court’s decision-making process. The requirements of this amendment can be only in the best interests of the child as well as of society, as has already been pointed out. I also wholeheartedly support the subsequent amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, requiring that these reports should be in writing. Nothing can be worse than an off the top of the head, last minute, verbal report, which tells you nothing of import about a child whose needs are bound to be great and are bound to be complex. As I pointed out at Second Reading, while the Government pay lip service to all manner of good intentions where sentencing is concerned—for example, using custody only as a very last resort and for as short a time as possible; the welfare of the child being paramount; and supporting the preference for community-based penalties wherever possible—the reality is quite at odds with those sentiments. While overall crime is dropping, the number of children being sent into custody continues to rise. Child prisons are by definition punishment rather than welfare based. Here, the STCs as well as the YOIs take children as young as 12 years-old. The budgets for the providers of the vital alternatives for young people in the community are being cut, thus limiting available resources. Under the amendment, local authorities are required to consider all available alternatives. That is the way to meet the obligations, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has just told us, of putting the welfare of the child first, of finding alternatives to custody except as a last resort and of the Government making available resources for appropriate provision. It is by now well known that children for whom custody is being considered are the most needy, most vulnerable and most damaged. Eighty per cent of the youngest children reoffend, the costs of custody are huge, and if their needs are appropriately met—for example, 60 per cent of boys have serious mental health problems—we will have a safer society, and less socially and mentally disabled children. We will also, incidentally, have complied with our obligations under Articles 37(b) and 40.4 of the UNCRC and Rule 19.1 of the Bejing rules, which would be no bad thing. It always defeats me how we somehow manage to sidestep, avoid or ignore these rules to which we should adhere and with which we should comply. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to local authorities, which are always strapped for cash. The reality can be that they are ready to let children go to custody where there is central funding and a ready facility is apparently there. The issue is not only bureaucracy, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, pointed out, it is also often cash. Local authorities lack a financial incentive; for example, individual support orders are not nearly as popular as ASBOs. Even, very sadly, the YOTs have become quite distanced from the work of children’s services, something which was commented on in a chief inspector’s report on safeguarding in 2002. Pre-sentence reports are vital. I urge the Government to look carefully at these important amendments carefully.