Why are so many young people in jail?

The Prison Reform Trust has published figures for the number of 10-17 year olds given custodial sentences last year. The Guardian reports:

The resulting league table was topped by Lambeth in south London, where almost one in 200 young people were given custodial sentences over the year, 25 times more than the equivalent figure for Dorset.

This is an appalling state of affairs. While overall crime rates in Lambeth are falling, our courts are locking up more young people — some as young as 10.

According to the Children’s Rights Alliance, Britain locks up more children than almost any other developed country: 2,500-3,000 at any one time. Thirty children have died in jail since 1990 but there has never been a public inquiry.

This is totally unnecessary and counter-productive. In prison, young people are cut off from the support they need. They are branded criminals and – surprise, surprise – some of them start behaving like criminals.

It is no coincidence that Lambeth also has staggeringly high rates of child poverty (51%, just over half of all children) and unfit housing (32%, just under a third).

Here’s my three steps to turning this around:

1. By offering all our young people a guaranteed full-time job on at least £9 an hour or a place in college or university with a full grant to live on, we could massively reduce the numbers tempted by crime.
2. By helping the small minority who do stray into real antisocial behaviour to get their lives back on track – rather than locking them up and forgetting about them – we could help them learn from mistakes instead of them learning a life of crime.
3. And by creating three million new jobs, building a million new homes and renovating others, we could eliminate poverty.

That’s what I call “Being tough on the causes of crime”. Labour seems to just want to be tough on children. And that doesn’t make them look big in my eyes.

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