Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 105: 105: Schedule 18, page 243, leave out lines 22 and 23 The noble Baroness said: The amendment seeks to allow the imposition of youth conditional cautions in appropriate circumstances where the young person has a previous conviction. The adult conditional caution is available at any point in an offender’s career; the Government’s proposal for youth conditional cautions, however, precludes such a disposal where the young person has a previous conviction. We hold that such an approach is not compatible with equal treatment on the basis of age, nor is it obviously consistent with the requirement in the Beijing rules where, "““consideration shall be given, wherever appropriate, to dealing with juvenile offenders without resorting to formal trial””." The potential for co-defendants of similar age and with a previous offending history to be treated differently is instructive. An 18 year-old adult with a single previous conviction might realistically be given a conditional caution in circumstances where the criteria for a 17 year-old would require prosecution. The anomaly also undermines the potential of the youth conditional caution to provide a flexible response to different circumstances. Research suggests that pre-court measures are, on average, considerably more effective in preventing further offending than court-imposed disposals. The current proposals would preclude a conditional caution and require prosecution for minor matters—for instance, where the child has a single previous conviction for an offence which he or she has denied so was not eligible for reprimand or a warning, and where a young person’s previous convictions relate to offences committed some years previously, irrespective of the nature of those offences. The amendment seeks to allow youth conditional cautions, subject to the discretion of the Crown Prosecution Service, at any point in the period of a child’s criminal activity. It would address the anomaly that less favourable treatment would otherwise be required in the case of a child rather than an adult in a similar position, and it would also permit more flexible and effective responses to the particular circumstances of the young person’s offending behaviour. I beg to move.