POLICY & PRACTICE: Soapbox - The new Victorianism of the youthjustice system
Richard Garside
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Dwaine's story might be slightly unusual. But there is nothing new in naughty children being treated like criminals. Today's politicians may be preoccupied about the menace posed by chewing gum and graffiti. In Victorian England children throwing snowballs or sliding on ice were liable to feel the long arm of the law. One magistrate remarked in 1852 that "the characters of children brought up in town are so precociously developed that I should find it difficult to mention any age at which they should not be treated as criminals".
Historical parallels can be misleading. But in this case they are instructive in understanding the trajectory of the youth justice system. Nacro's report, A failure of justice: Reducing child imprisonment, highlights the dramatic increase in the number of children being sent to prison over the past decade, and this at a time when youth crime has fallen quite significantly.
Some young offenders will inevitably end up in custody. But it simply cannot be right, nor make sense, to hold so many in Prison Service custody in conditions that are far from ideal. For example, compared with the 21,000 to 31,000 annual per-capita spending on education in local authority secure accommodation, spending in Prison Service young offender institutions averages 3,000.
Meanwhile, holding true to its "tough on crime" maxim, the Government introduced community-based punishments. Hence we have the Orwellian-sounding Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme for the under-18s, and from this month the Intensive Control and Change Programme for the 18 to 21 age group.
There is some truth in the claim that the proof of such programmes will be in their effectiveness at cutting offending and re-offending. But in our rush to develop ways of tackling youth crime, we risk forgetting that some of the children in the greatest trouble are also the most troubled children. Such talk may sound old-fashioned at a time when "modernisation" is the operative word. But is it any more outdated than the new Victorianism that seems to be affecting the juvenile justice system?