I read Young People Now regularly: no-one's very keen on penal custody for young people, are they? Indeed not. It's ineffective, arguably inhumane, and even those who think it has to be retained want it seen as a last resort.
And that's more or less what the Government thinks too, isn't it? Ah, well, there's the problem, you see.
In theory, the Home Office is sympathetic to this view, but in practice the number of under-18s remanded or sentenced to custody has been rising for a decade.
By September 2002, the number of juveniles in detention in England and Wales stood at 3,133, the highest figure for 20 years. This is also one of the highest proportions in Europe: four times higher than the French, 10 times that in Spain and 100 times that in Finland.
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