The MPA looked into the Metropolitan Police's dealings with young people and interviewed more than 1,000 young people and adults over a six-month period in 2007/08.
Young people were scathing about custodial sentences and told the MPA that young offender institutions (YOIs) were "youth clubs" or "holiday camps". One young person who had had a custodial sentence at a YOI admitted the first two to three weeks of her sentence were hard, but then she became used to it. "It's like being in your bedroom, but locked up," she said.
Young people said prisons and YOIs should be harsher environments and life sentences should mean life. The young people were also concerned that on occasion there were too many legal loopholes and that sentences could be overturned on a technicality.
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