Children should no longer be sent to jail, says commissioner

Age of criminality should be raised to 14 in sweeping reforms to youth justice system, report urges

THE jailing of children should be virtually eradicated and the age of criminali ty raised from 10 to 14, says the children’s commissioner, as she called for a Scandinavian-style reform of youth justice.

In a report, Anne Longfield said the number of children held in custody should be reduced to the “absolute minimum” as in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Denmark, where all five combined have just 13 children aged 15 to 17 in prison.

By contrast, there are on average 870 children under 18 in custody in England and Wales at any one time, in a system that Ms Longfield said was failing because seven in 10 of them reoffend.

She called for a radical rethink, with more resources devoted to stopping gangs from exploiting vulnerable children, and to identifying children at risk of getting involved in crime and then diverting them away from offending.

This could be done through replacing custody with Scandinavian-style secure schools and accommodation, putting mental health counsellors in every school to spot early signs of problems and a reversal of youth club and service cuts to help keep children out of trouble.

Ms Longfield also recommended raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14, in line with proposals by the UN to stop criminalising children from a young age. The average age of criminal responsibility in Scandinavia is 15.

“For too long, ruthless criminals have been able to exploit gaps in the education and child protection system to exploit and criminalise vulnerable children.

Tackling the scourge of serious violence requires a radical change in how we view the youth justice system,” she said.

The commissioner said the current system failed to take action early, with more than half (56 per cent) of jailed children having previously been identified as a “child in need” of additional state support, and seven in 10 having a mental health problem. More than eight in 10 (85 per cent) boys in young offender institutions had previously been excluded from school, but rather than being kept within the mainstream sector had been put in approved units, where they were vulnerable to gangs.

“At every stage of a child’s journey through the criminal justice system, opportunities are being missed to get to the root causes of offending and put children’s best interests at the heart of the response,” said Ms Longfield.

“Ultimately, the system fails to see the child first and the ‘offender’ second, which reduces the opportunity for real change.”