Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 114: 114: Schedule 19, page 249, line 34, leave out from ““(3))”” to end of line 35 and insert— ““(a) the period of three months from the date on which the conditional caution was given if the offender was aged 18 or over at the time the caution was delivered, or (b) six weeks from the date on which the caution was given if it was a youth conditional caution as defined in section 66A(2) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.”” The noble Baroness said: This amendment, too, was advocated by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. It would introduce a distinction in rehabilitation periods associated with youth conditional cautions and conditional cautions for adults. The Bill proposes a specified rehabilitation period of three months for conditional cautions unless the person is subsequently prosecuted and convicted in respect of that offence. If the latter happens, the rehabilitation period will be that associated with the sentence imposed by the court. The proposal would entail conditional cautions becoming spent after the same period, irrespective of the age of the subject. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 distinguishes between children and adults in the rehabilitation periods associated with many of the disposals that currently fall within its scope. Most custodial sentences are in effect halved in the case of a young person under 18 at the point of conviction. The differentiation is maintained for the youth rehabilitation order proposed in Part 1 of this Bill; in other words, the order would have a shorter rehabilitation period than the adult equivalent. There may be good grounds for distinguishing between children and adults. An unspent conviction on a young person’s record has a disproportionate effect given that their employment history will be short by virtue of their youth. It has an effect when they enter the job market, for example. The Home Office review of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, Breaking the Cycle, said that many young people wanting to enter the job market may have had no other experience with which to demonstrate attributes, such as reliability, that are important to employers. An unspent record may have a particularly damaging effect on someone who has had no opportunity to build up a record in the community. We propose that youth conditional cautions should become spent more quickly than the equivalent pre-court disposals for adults. Such a distinction would reflect the belief that youth conditional caution conditions should be less onerous than those for adults and therefore completed more quickly. The thinking behind this is that, if you apply a formula to adults and change it disproportionately for younger people, it may not have the effect of making that shortened period feel significantly shorter, because naturally if you have lived less long the passing of time seems slower. So the amendment would provide for a rehabilitation period of six weeks in the case of a youth conditional caution, which would be half that which would apply to adults. I beg to move.