Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

moved Amendment No. 115: 115: After Clause 102, insert the following new Clause— ““Treatment of 17 year-olds as children for remand purposes (1) Section 23 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 (c. 54) (remands and committals to local authority accommodation) is amended as follows. (2) In subsection (12), in the definition of ““young person””, for ““seventeen”” substitute ““eighteen””.”” The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment, I shall speak to Amendment No. 116 as well. Both are in my name and those of my noble friends. Amendment No. 115 concerns, once again, the treatment of 17 year-olds, in relation, in this case, to bail or remand. At present, there is an anomaly here, for while 17 year-olds are still technically children, they are in fact treated as adults when bail is denied, which means that they are automatically remanded in custody and not to local authority secure—or non-secure—accommodation. The Bail Act 1976 applies in its entirety to children and young people as well as adults, but it is only when the court refuses bail that the law relating to children is substantially different to that applying to an adult. As a result of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, young people under 17 are dealt with in the youth court system and benefit from the rules that ensure that, while bail may not be granted, other provisions are in place to make certain that a remand into custody is always an absolute last resort. This can mean a remand to local authority accommodation, which, if not secure, can include additional conditions to manage any risks and include a YOT pre-court programme or tagging, all of which is extremely constructive. Alternatively, it could mean a remand to local authority secure accommodation for all girls up to 16, and boys if they are considered to be vulnerable. Finally YOIs—youth offender institutions or secure training centres can be considered for non-vulnerable boys of 15 and 16, but that does not apply to 17 year-olds, who are still being dealt with as adults and do not have any of the other options available to 16 year-olds. Youth Justice Board figures show that 6,561 ““episodes””—a curious name, in this case—of 17 year-olds remanded to custody occurred in 2005-6. The Government said that they intended to put this situation right when they responded to the consultation paper Youth Justice—the Next Steps in 2004, but these figures show that it is still merely an intention and nothing has actually happened. Hence the need for this amendment. Where the line is drawn to distinguish between children of different ages can always have an element of arbitrariness, but there are no obvious grounds for continuing to treat 17 year-olds as adults, particularly when they are still legally children and just as liable to be vulnerable as 16 year-olds. Indeed, the evidence shows that many 17 year-olds can indeed be very vulnerable and are part of figures showing that 60 per cent of boys have serious mental illness. There have been 1,324 self-harming incidents in 2004-5 and six suicides in the past five years. They all demonstrate my point. When secure accommodation is deemed necessary, which it very well may be, it is generally accepted that children should be kept out of the adult criminal justice system for as long as humanly possible to avoid the damaging effects that custody entails. I therefore urge the Government to consider the amendment very seriously. Amendment No. 116, to a certain extent, follows on from what I have just said. Children who are detained on sentence or remand should be detained only in secure children’s homes and not in a secure training centre or a young offender institution. Once again, the argument is based on the premise that we are talking about children with needs and vulnerabilities, which are now clearly defined and acknowledged in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and the Local Government Association, not to mention all the professional bodies involved in the needs of and provision for children who come together under the umbrella of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. YOIs are part of the Prison Service. The Prison Service is essentially an institution for adults where the emphasis is primarily on security, control and safety, as well as on making provision for the needs of prisoners. Here I declare an interest as vice-president of the Butler Trust, which I helped to found, and which for more than 20 years has been recognising excellence in prisons by giving awards to staff. So I know just what good work can be done and am always glad to pay tribute to the work it does, which we recognise annually. Indeed, we will be doing so on Monday in Buckingham Palace. I also therefore know that prisons are not places with a child-centred approach or where the welfare of children is the chief priority. Nor are they geared to meet their needs in terms of their staffing, training, management or regimes. And the current overcrowding crisis serves only to exacerbate these problems. Anne Owers, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, has voiced real concerns. She has said that in many YOI establishments, a significant proportion of child protection referrals concern allegations of abuse or rough handling during the use of force and that some have resulted in injuries such as broken bones. She questions whether prison is the right or appropriate environment for many of the young people who end up there. We must take these comments very seriously. I have visited all but one of the secure training centres, and I recognise the hard work and commitment that many people who work in them bring to the task. But they too do not have the predominating welfare approach that children need; and the evidence of the Carlile report on restraint, strip-searching and ““single separations””—or solitary confinement in plain English—is enough to demonstrate that they are not geared to do the job appropriately or to give the care needed. Once again I remind the Committee that one child has died while being restrained. While lessons have been learnt—and it was horrific for all involved—it reflects aspects of the management, culture, staff training and regime that are simply not appropriate. Before 1997 the Labour Party strongly criticised the plans for STCs, which were then still not built. In 10 years they have been embraced by this Government wholeheartedly and have apparently become a key part of youth custody. That has not been found necessary in Scotland and nor should it be necessary there. These children are often extraordinarily difficult to deal with. They are indeed the young thugs, feral youths and hooligans that we read about in the red tops—and they are familiar to many noble Lords in this place who sit in court as sentencers. They require extraordinary levels of skill, understanding and organisation and so on, to manage them adequately and constructively. They are more likely to be found in secure children’s homes precisely because of their focus on welfare needs and their ethos. Not all such homes are as brilliant as they perhaps need to be, but I know some brilliant ones, and you can recognise them as soon as you go through the door. The restraints used elsewhere are not used to anything like the same extent in those homes and the chances of children coming out less damaged are greatly improved. For as long as they are children, we are duty bound to treat them with the same care as all our children. To do otherwise would be to betray them and to demean ourselves. I beg to move.