Naming child offenders harms rehabilitation

Children in the criminal courts have similar protections of anonymity as children in family courts. The big difference is that judges can and do lift reporting restrictions on the grounds of the public interest.

Any infringements of the rights of children in court to anonymity need to be watched carefully. No statistics are kept on how many times children are named but it is happening and not just in high profile murder cases.

Applications to lift the protection of anonymity are almost always made by the media. They claim to act in the public interest but the link between naming children and selling papers is clear and should concern us all.

In this most recent high-profile case the judge, Lord Matthews, otherwise famous for handing down the longest prison sentence ever by a Scottish court, ruled that naming was in the public interest. He seems to have confused "the public interest" with "the interests of the public". It is hard to see how it was in the public's interest to know the name of this child killer. Yes, his crime was repulsive. Yes, he must be punished. But what purpose is served by naming him?

Punish the defendant, but balance this with keeping a clear focus on the issue of eventual rehabilitation. This needs to be at the heart of the court's concern. Identifying children during court hearings only gets in the way of the chances of eventual successful rehabilitation. We know that many crimes committed by children, even the most horrendous, share characteristics of impulsiveness, immaturity, and, often, ignorance of the likely outcome of certain actions. All these characteristics will be affected by the passage of time, especially if the child is helped by a thorough programme of rehabilitation.

Naming children and exposing them, and their families, to public vilification and in many cases determined attempts to harm them can play no part in such rehabilitation. Far better that they serve their punishment as anonymously as possible, while skilled adults help them understand their crimes and address the underlying causes of the sometimes horrendous acts that led them before the court.

Lord Matthews sought to justify his decision by pleading that the boy's name was circulating in social media. Statistics on the number of Google searches of his name were produced to support this argument. Just because this is so does not justify judges helping with this naming. This is not the mark of a civilized society.

We need to rally against these breaches of children's rights. Many of the offences may be truly awful. It is right that we should condemn them. But to name the child defendant is to set our justice back 200 years or more.

• John Drew is senior associate at the Prison Reform Trust and former chair of the Youth Justice Board