Giving councils child custody budget 'would cut crime'
Local councils should control the annual child custody budget
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Monday, 30, Jun 2008 12:01
Giving local councils control of the £279 million annual child custody budget would cut crime, a new report has said.
The Prison Reform Trust plan published today claims the move would also lead to a reduction in the number of children in jail.
The report calls for a radical reform of the "failing" youth justice system, which the trust claims has missed its key target of cutting the number of children behind bars this year.
The Prison Reform Trust claims the Youth Justice Board (YJB) has presided over an eight per cent increase in the number of children in custody, with more than 3,000 children in jail in April this year.
It is suggested that the budget from the YJB should be handed instead to local authorities because they would have a "greater incentive" to prevent offending.
The councils would also be tempted to offer robust alternatives to custody "if they had to foot the bill for every child in their area who goes to jail".
Today's report claims that at least one third of children currently in custody are there because of non-violent crimes and that the number of children sentenced in England and Wales more than tripled from 1991 to 2006.
Penelope Gibbs, director of the Prison Reform Trust's Programme to Reduce Child and Youth Imprisonment, said: "In England and Wales we imprison more children than any other country in Western Europe and yet show no signs of getting a grip on the numbers.
"The children we lock up today become tomorrow's long-term prisoners. There are children as young as 12 imprisoned for non-violent offences.
"Children do need to understand the often devastating effect of their crimes, but jail is not the answer. Our survey proves the public don't believe locking up children works."
Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, added: "How long are we going to put up with children's depressing journey from family breakdown, school exclusion and local authority care through to prison, homelessness, unemployment and more crime when there are ways to intervene at every stage to enable young people to get their lives back on track?"