Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

In a sense, our arguments are the same as for the last group of amendments. Again we start with the question of whether this is a micromanaged approach or whether it provides an appropriate framework for the dedicated people in the field who will operate the system we enact. I suspect that we will not entirely agree. However, I think we all agree that we want sufficient discretion for the people in the field. I do not disagree with that at all. The concept of youth conditional cautions has received a broad welcome and is seen as a useful addition to the out-of-court disposals. Overall, that responds to the point raised by the noble Lord. I accept that there are arguments about how much discretion there is within the youth conditional caution system and that is what we are now debating. If a young person either commits a serious offence or continues to offend despite other out-of-court disposals and intervention, surely it is proper for such people to be dealt with by the court. Unless the first offence a young person commits is a serious one, the court is only likely to come to deal with the young offender where other interventions have failed to prevent him or her reoffending. As I said on the last group of amendments, a young person who comes before a court may well have received a reprimand, a warning or possibly two, and a youth conditional caution or possibly two—potentially up to five previous out-of-court disposals. Both the warnings and the youth custodial cautions may well have had interventions and conditions attached. Once they have been dealt with by a court, any further offending indicates that they are not responding to either the out-of-court disposals or the sentence imposed by the court. That is why we think it would be inappropriate to send the young offender a signal that, even when they have reached the stage of being dealt with by the court, if they offend again they will be dealt with by one of the less serious out-of-court disposals. It is a balance: the young person has many opportunities to do the right thing, but once a case gets to court the young offender needs to understand that repeat offending will lead to more serious consequences, not less. That, essentially, is the reason we are taking this approach. The noble Baroness raised again the question of adults, who can receive a conditional caution subsequent to a conviction yet young offenders cannot receive a youth conditional caution in the same circumstances. We discussed this in the last group of amendments. I know that there is an argument from the Standing Committee on Youth Justice that this is a breach of a young person’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. However, as I said earlier, young people and adults have different needs and therefore it can be appropriate for them to be dealt with separately in a different system, which we have in this country. There is also the practical issue that with adults, as I said, there will be many years between the offences committed by them. The youth justice system includes a series of out-of-court diversions—and there is no argument that we want to divert wherever we can—but there has to be a cut-off point where diversion has been tried but has not succeeded. That is why we reached the conclusion that the noble Baroness has argued against. It is not a knee-jerk reaction but a considered judgment about where the balance should rise in these circumstances.