Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I support the principle behind the amendment but I, too, have some concerns about the wording. It is too restrictive. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, on that. I am also concerned that paragraphs (a) and (b) of proposed new Section 152A(1) are cumulative, so that you must have both aspects in order for a custodial sentence to be passed. On a slightly different aspect that worries me very much, many adults with serious mental health problems find themselves in prison because there are not hospitals appropriate to take them. There are therefore people locked up in prison as a place of last resort, although the problems that led them to commit their crimes are due to their mental health rather than solely to their criminality. I do not know—I ask the Minister—how many children and young people are in prison because there is nowhere else to send them and they are not safe to leave in the community. I had some experience in my previous life of trying to find places for young people who were not actually going before the criminal courts, although they should have been there in one sense; although they had committed offences, we caught them before it was necessary to take them there. I remember one 15 year-old who was extremely dangerous. It was difficult to find a place for him to go. I recall opening a place for young psychiatrically disturbed people under the age of 18 in Newcastle about 15 years ago. It added another 20 places to the eight places at that time catering for these mental health problems. That provided 28 places only for the whole country. There will be people who need to be locked up, but they do not need to be locked up in prison. What are the Government providing by way of psychiatric places in a hospital that devotes one wing to young people, or therapeutic communities where the young people can be helped? The other group that I remember well was at Peper Harrow, which is now Childhood First; that community had to close down because people would not pay to send people there. The Caldecott community has a number of young people who otherwise might very well be in prison. The therapeutic community is an enormously valuable asset for those who do not actually have to be locked up as dangerous but who, if they were not in the therapeutic community, would either have committed suicide or be in a psychiatric hospital, if one could find one. We need more mental health places for young people as the alternative to putting them in prison.