My Lords, I shall echo most of what has already been said. I think that around the Chamber we are pretty well agreed that what is being planned in general for the most vulnerable children in our community is entirely inappropriate and inadequate.
First, I shall speak to the new clause proposed in Amendment 43B concerning sentencing guidelines and provisions regarding secure colleges. The clause would amend the sentencing guidelines laid down in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 in relation to those aged under 18. It states that no court should impose a custodial sentence upon an offender who is under 18 simply because a place happens to be available at a secure college when otherwise a community sentence would have been imposed, or impose a longer sentence precisely because a place at a secure college is available. It reflects a concern that sentencers might be attracted by the idea of a secure college at the expense of a community sentence because of the possibility of the education that may be on offer. That of course is very superficially attractive, not least because at this point in time we have no idea what that educational provision will consist of.
It is rather like when the DTO was introduced in 2000. It was attractive to magistrates because it appeared to combine punishment with rehabilitation and protection to society, but it simply resulted in a surge of children in custody. With similar perceptions, there is a real risk that secure colleges could drive up the numbers in custody. It is important to remember that custody really must be the disposal of last resort for young people in particular. They have the worst outcomes of all sentencing options for society, as well as for the offender, as 70% of children and 58% of 18 to 21 year-olds will reoffend within a year of their release.
We know that non-custodial sentences offer far better outcomes all round, particularly in terms of reoffending. However, the form of custody envisaged by the secure college, by virtue of its scale alone, offers little hope of achieving much in terms of improving the life chances of the children and young people it is planned that it will hold. Some 320 children under one
roof, or at least in one campus, is just an impossible size for anything to be done—as everybody has been saying—on a personal basis.
There is an additional worry, highlighted originally by Sir Alan Beith MP at Second Reading in the Commons, that the education said to be on offer is likely to be piecemeal at best when the average length of custody is 79 days and hardly long enough to complete any course, even if a young offender happened to arrive at the college at the beginning of one. They take pot luck to join in when they arrive. So the reality of the college experience from an educational point of view alone is—