The Youth Justice Board has a target to reduce the number of young people held in custody by 10 per cent by March 2008, and the Home Office is keen to develop stronger community alternatives to custody - some of which would be introduced by the bill.
Last month the board published its Strategy for the Secure Estate for Children and Young People, including a plan to create more open types of custody, which young offenders could be sent to after serving part of their sentence while held in the closed secure estate.
If published the bill would propose legislation to back this up, said Tim Bateman, senior youth crime policy development officer for charity Nacro, at a National Association for Youth Justice conference last week.
Bateman added that this inadvertently could lead to tougher sentences.
"If sentencers know that there will be a decision taken that these young people can be placed outside of custody, they may compensate by making a longer order," he said. "A young person would serve just as long inside, and then serve in an open institution."
Bateman also said that there is a proposal in the bill to rename young offender institutions and secure training centres, calling them both detention and training centres. He said this risks making custody sound more palatable. "When the detention and training order was introduced there was an immediate surge in numbers of young people sent to custody," he added.
