Justice: Sentencing of Young Offenders

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, first, on the question of the age of criminal responsibility, the argument that has been put forward by successive Governments is that keeping it at 10 allows the support services to intervene early and positively with young offenders who have committed serious offences. I think the Scots have already moved or are about to move to 12, and, as the noble Lord rightly said, other parts of Europe have higher ages. All I can say is that at the moment, as with our predecessors, Her Majesty’s Government have no plans to review that minimum age—for that reason of intervention.

On the question of help for young offenders, again, following on from the progress made by our predecessors, we are trying early intervention to help to identify the problems behind some of the offences, and that will certainly continue.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that there has been a significant reduction in youth crime that is mainly attributable to the work of the Youth Justice Board, which deals with offenders up to the age of 18? Will he consider extending the remit of the Youth Justice Board to deal with young adult offenders up to the age of 21 to see whether this pattern can be repeated?

[Lord McNally]

Like the age of criminal responsibility, this matter is kept under review. There are certainly indications that more holistic intervention by youth offending teams has led to a significant fall-off in youth offending, and there are lessons to be learnt from that. As always with these matters, the question is how much further up the age group one can carry interventions such as that without severe resource implications. However, my noble friend is right to draw attention to the 18 to 25 group, where a lot of criminality that lasts for a lifetime starts becoming embedded.