My Lords, in supporting Amendment 14, to which I have added my name, I shall speak also to Amendment 20, which noble Lords will note has virtually the same wording as Amendment 14 and for the same reasons. As the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has made abundantly clear, the needs of women as regards community sentences in particular are currently not being satisfied. Indeed, we are still waiting for the Government’s paper on strategic priorities for women, which we have been expecting for some time.
In his answers to the debate we had on 30 October, the Minister mentioned that there had been success with young offenders. In fact, for young offenders, one has to read “children” because the success has been with the under-18s, led by the Youth Justice Board. There is then a gap, which is variously described as being those between 18 and 21 or 18 and 25. That debate has been raging for ages. It means that there is a gap in the provision for people of a very vulnerable age who are in transition to adulthood. I must commend to the House the remarkable work done by the alliance which has the name Transition to Adulthood. I shall mention in particular two documents published by the alliance. One is called Pathways from Crime: Ten steps to a more effective approach for young adults in the criminal justice process. The other is Going for Gold, which was published last week. It has a bronze, silver and gold approach to community sentencing, which I commend to the Government.
In commenting on community sentences, Pathways from Crime recommends:
“The few existing examples of young adult specific community interventions that exist across the country should be replicated nationally, and similar effective interventions should be available to all sentencers when sentencing a young adult”.
I say “hear, hear” to that. I admit that I was slightly, I hope, confused when in an answer on 30 May the Minister hinted that instead of young adult community sentences being handed to the probation service to administer, they were going to be handed to local
authorities. I am worried about that because one of the recent successes in this neglected area, as the House has heard many times, is the intensive alternatives to custody programme. It has been piloted in Manchester, South Yorkshire, London and other places, and was very valuably evaluated by Matrix Knowledge, which proved the value that the programme presented in terms of preventing reoffending.
The probation service has neglected this group for too long, although now, having tasted success with these programmes, it is very anxious to get into the game. I believe it is very important that, instead of leaving provision for this group up to individual local authorities, it should be made clearly the responsibility of the probation service so that intensive alternatives to custody and other programmes can be developed nationally and, therefore, have some hope of consistency.
I am very glad that the subject has been studied with such assiduity by Transition to Adulthood because, in its work, it is filling in a great gap which has existed for too long. On 25 July, the Minister told me that there was going to be a commissioning strategy for young adults from the Ministry of Justice, which we still await. However, I hope that by raising the issue at this stage two very important gaps—women and young adults—can be properly looked after in the community sentencing arrangements, which the Government say in Schedule 16 they intend to introduce.