Councillors called on to visit young people in secure settings
Janaki Mahadevan
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The children's commissioner for England has sent out a plea to local authority leaders to visit children and young people imprisoned as a result of rioting and looting this summer.
Speaking at an event entitled Moving on from the Riots at the National Children and Adult Services Conference in London, Atkinson said many young people involved in the disturbances had simply got "caught up" in the excitement.
She also said the nature of the secure estate meant that with increased numbers of young people being imprisoned as a result of the riots, councillors and officials had a responsibility to scrutinise those secure settings.
"The stark figures about what happens to children and young people in our youth justice system, even the most humane settings, are really important for us all to learn," Atkinson said. "Children who are incarcerated are 18 times more likely to take their own lives; seven out of 10 of them will reoffend. What we are doing to children and young people in the secure estate in particular needs constant scrutiny.
"If you are a councillor or a senior official and you have youngsters from your patch in secure accommodation please go and visit them because even the most humane cannot provide the family environment that children and young people need."
Vice-president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services Debbie Jones added her concern about the harsh sentences meted out to some of the young people.
"A lot of the young people who got involved opportunistically had never been involved in this kind of behaviour before and the consequences of dealing with them one way, i.e. taking them through the sausage machine of the youth justice system has been incredibly scary," she said. "Some young people have ended up being secured into remand, who have never had that experience before. They have been escalated to the top of the tariff and this has led to a situations which frankly is concerning in terms of their vulnerability."
The ADCS’s policy lead on youth justice Andrew Webb also voiced his disappointment at the youth justice system and its response to the riots.
He said: "My comment is about how depressed I have been by the current youth justice system’s response to the behaviour of young people. I think every young person needs to understand the consequences of their actions and face with the consequences of their actions.
"But our justice system punishes rather than does anything else. What we could put in the place of custody is restorative justice. Young people are not just young adults, they are immature and because they don’t really understand the consequences of what they are doing, our system needs to take account of that. We have to educate the electorate to say that restorative justice is a much better way of doing things."
Eleanor Brazil, interim strategic director for children’s services in Birmingham, responded to Atkinson’s plea by describing the difficulty her authority faced in managing to stay connected to all the young people who had been sentenced. "We have young people in custody in 17 parts of England," she said. "Trying to keep in touch with them is a hugely difficult logistic and service nightmare."