HC Deb 19 April 1962 vol 658 cc751-69

2.49 p.m.

Sir Richard Glyn (Dorset, North)

We have listened to two debates on education concerned with the instruction of normal juveniles. I wish to raise today a point affecting a small number of abnormal boys who represent a very different though none the less very important problem. I am grateful for this opportunity to raise a subject which is of increasing importance to the public and to all concerned with the administration of justice.

In the debate on the Address in 1958, I referred to the alarming increase in juvenile violence and pointed out that the courts were now confronted with a new style of offence committed by a new type of offender. I showed that the number of convictions for violence against the person by juveniles under 17 had doubled in the four years between 1953 and 1957, because the courts had not adequate powers to deter these young thugs and thereby protect the public. Since I spoke I have had many letters on this subject from all parts of the country, and I have had my attention drawn to cases so disgraceful that I feel bound to raise the matter once again.

There are fewer reports of these cases in the newspapers today because now we have reached a stage where every week over 270 people are being wounded by these thugs and individual cases attract less public attention. To give an example, the News of the World used formerly to give prominence to these cases. Now they are mentioned only if someone is actually killed, or a policeman wounded, or if there is some other unusual feature. Statistics show that in the three years since 1958 the number of convictions for juvenile violence by boys under 17 has doubled again. In 1960 the figure was running at no less than four times the figure for 1953, and the courts still have no effective deterrent, because detention centres are having no effect on this problem as I shall show. Meanwhile the public suffer.

At the Conservative Party conference at Brighton last October my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary heard it said that at recent local elections many people in built-up areas were unwilling to open their door at night because they feared being attacked. These people had to be canvassed through locked doors. My right hon. Friend agreed with what was said about people not wanting to go out at night. He said that it was perfectly true of built-up areas.

I think this a disgraceful state of affairs. Unfortunately it is not confined only to built-up areas. In many parts of the country, including my own constituency, old people living alone are afraid to open their doors at night. They fear the violence of young hooligans. They are torn between the hope of a friendly visit to brighten up the long lonely evenings and the fear of violent juveniles. Too often fear wins. The knock on the door remains unanswered and their loneliness remains unrelieved.

At the Brighton conference my right hon. Friend said that he would never deviate from the path of deciding questions strictly on the evidence which came before him. I propose now to put forward some evidence on this important subject. First, as to the scope of the problem. Since 1938 indictable offences, that is the more serious kind of offences, of all kinds have increased by 109 per cent., which is another way of saying that they have rather more than doubled. But this increase, it is important to note, has not been evenly spread over the different types of offences. Such offences as larceny, fraud and false pretences show only a small increase of between 60 per cent. and 70 per cent., which is below the general average. Other offences of dishonesty, like breaking and entering and receiving, show increases of nearly 200 per cent., which means that they have nearly trebled. Offences of violence against the person show an increase of over 600 per cent., which is to say that they are now seven times the figure for 1938; and these offences have increased in number much faster than any other sort of offence.

Moreover the increase in cases of violence against the person is not evenly spread among the different age groups concerned. Convictions for offences of this kind involving offenders of 30 years of age and over show an increase of 240 per cent. For offenders between 21 and 30 the increase is 630 per cent. But the increase in the number of convictions involving juveniles under 21 is no less than 1,550 per cent., which is another way of saying that these young thugs are now committing more than 16 times as many acts of violence as before the war. The increase in acts of violence by youths under 21 is three-and-a-half times greater than is the increase in respect of adults of over 21.

It appears that the present system of deterrence has wholly failed to cope with these violent juveniles, and this in spite of the fact that the detection rate for crimes of violence is very high, about 66 per cent. in 1959, against the national average of 44 per cent. of offences of all kinds known to the police. I think that conviction deters only when the courts can inflict a suitable penalty, which is not the case at present in respect of these violent young thugs who are not dishonest.

I stress that we are now faced with a new sort of problem. Before the war, violence was almost always associated with robbery, or some hope of financial gain, but present-day juvenile violence is not in any way associated with dishonesty. It is an aggravated form of bullying, carried to excess and highlighted by the use of dangerous weapons. To give a topical example, only two weeks ago a group of young thugs forced their way into a church hall in north London where a dance was being held and proceeded to smash up everything within reach with clubs and coshes. Four youths in the hall had to be taken to hospital with stab wounds, one being dangerously hurt. No one knows why the attack was made or how the victims were selected. By a sad coincidence, one of the stabbed boys was the brother of one who was killed in a similar affray a few years ago.

It is important to realise that the majority of young thugs who do this kind of thing have never been involved in any crime of dishonesty. They are violent, but not dishonest. Official figures show that the proportion of youths convicted for violence who had never been convicted of any form of offence was, 80 per cent. under 17 years of age and 70 per cent. in the age group 17 to 21. This is a very important fact which makes them unsuitable in the eyes of the court for remand homes and detention centres where they would mix with young thieves and from which the courts believe they would emerge dishonest as wall as violent. In the minority of cases where youths combine violence with dishonesty the courts find no objection to sending them to a penal institution. No problem exists for men over 21 who are less likely to be contaminated by thieves, but for violent youths who are not dishonest the courts at present have no effective deterrent no matter how serious the offence has been.

During the last twelve months no fewer than four youths under 17—one was only 12—have been charged at the Old Bailey with murder. One was actually tried for murder and convicted of manslaughter, to which each of the other charges were reduced. In every case those boys had intentionally stabbed a fellow creature who died from the wounds inflicted. In every case the defence counsel and probation officers pointed out that because they had no record of dishonesty there would be dangers in sending them to detention centres and other places where they would mix with dishonest youths. In every case the Old Bailey judge concerned, after inquiry, decided against the detention centre and in each case these four youths were put on probation.

The proportion of youths under 21 charged with violence is rising tremendously in London. I am informed that in the last two years at the Old Bailey charges of violence constituted no less than 33 per cent. of all charges brought against youths under 21. Charges against youths under 17 also show a tremendous increase and include most serious offences, such as murder, manslaughter and, unfortunately, attempted rape. The truth is that violent children are now committing adult crimes and the penalties originally appropriate for violent adults are not suitable for these violent boys. The opinion of the courts as to the incidence of dishonest youths in detention centres is fully borne out by an analysis published by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, which states that of a total of 959 youths undergoing detention, 498 were sentenced for breaking and entering, 458 for larceny, while those detained for violence numbered only three.

The reluctance of the courts to sentence honest but brutally violent thugs to detention was emphasised in tables VIII, IX and X in last year's Criminal Statistics, which show that out of a total of 3,592 youths summarily convicted in magistrates' courts for offences of wounding, 2,996—or about six out of seven—were dealt with by probation, bind-over, fine, or conditional or other discharge. They show that 194 of the older youths went to prison and 128 to remand homes or approved schools, while only 56—or 1.5 per cent.—were sent to detention. So much for the impact of detention centres on violent but honest juveniles.

Most modern psychologists who have written about the problem of modern juvenile criminals have based their reports on those who could be studied in institutions; in prisons, borstals or detention centres—to which, as we have seen, these violent young thugs are seldom sent. One or two of them, however, have studied the problem at first hand, and some of these have made practical comments on the mentality of this new type of violent youth who is not dishonest.

For example, Mr. T. R. Fyvel, who has made a close personal study of these young thugs, includes in his book The Insecure Offenders, a section headed "Fear of Authority". Unfortunately, the fear which he reports is not the wholesome fear of the authority of the courts but the fear felt by a group described as being "particularly reckless 16-year-olds" for the heavy hands of the police in a certain area. Mr. Fyvel quotes one informant, and I requote: No matter how tough these young fellows think they are, they remain dead scared of the police. They know once the police get them into the cells, they won't be handled with kid gloves, and that knowledge is always on their minds. I say at once that it is entirely wrong for any policeman to act in such a way towards any offender, and no evidence was quoted in the book to show that the police ever did misbehave in this way. But there was clear evidence that these particularly reckless young 16-year-olds carefully avoided the area in which they feared that the police would act in that way, and that that knowledge was always on their minds.

It is unfortunate that the courts have no power to order legally what these particularly reckless 16-year-olds were so afraid the police would do illegally. I should like to see this respect which Mr. Fyvel reports transferred from police suspected of using force illegally to courts with power to order judicial corporal punishment legally—and that over the whole country and not confined to any one area.

In view of the total failure of the pre-sent policy of detention centres and similar institutions, which are recognised by the courts as being unsuitable for violent but not dishonest juvenile offenders, I ask that an inquiry should be instituted as a matter of urgency; that a committee be instructed to make a specialised study of the problem of juvenile violence, and to report as soon as possible whether or not there is evidence in favour of the reintroduction of judicial corporal punishment for this limited type of offender. The extraordinary increase of this type of offence and the absence of any appropriate deterrent form a combination which, in my submission, demands prompt action.

The attention of the committee for which I ask should be directed to the standard of proof which the Cadogan Committee demanded from those who supported judicial corporal punishment which, it said, would be justified if any one of three conditions could be proved. In the somewhat stately language of those days, the Committee required either … facts and figures showing that the introduction of the power of ordering judicial corporal punishment had produced a decrease in the number of offences for which it may be imposed, or alternatively, that offences for which it may be ordered have tended to increase when little use was made of it or to decrease when that power was used frequently. A committee with its attention focused on this subject of iuvenile violence will have no difficulty in finding conclusive evidence of every one of these three conditions, each of which in itself would, by the standard of the Cadogan Committee, justify the reintroduction of judicial corporal punishment for violent juveniles.

I should add that these three points were republished in the same words with approval by the Barry Committee, and, in order to save time, because this matter is urgent, I will briefly outline the evidence available on these three points. The earliest evidence in point of time is a scrap of evidence in the report of the Cadogan Committee itself. The only part of this Report limited to violent juveniles and the facts concerning them is Table 5 of Appendix III of the Cadogan Report, which shows that youths under 21 who had undergone judicial corporal punishment for violence were less likely to be reconvicted for violence than those who had not undergone judicial corporal punishment for violent offences, the proportions of those reconvicted for violence being 4½ per cent. for those who had undergone corporal punishment and 13½ per cent. for those who had not. This is quite a significant difference, which was overlooked, I think because the attention of the Committee was not focused upon this particular aspect of the problem.

More recently, the Barry Committee's Report gives a picture of the state of present-day informed opinion on judicial corporal punishment. Paragraph 21 states that the Lord Chief Justice had submitted a memorandum in favour of judicial corporal punishment, which had been approved by a great majority of the Judges of the Queen's Bench Division, and other persons concerned with the administration of the criminal law. Paragraph 22 states that 70 per cent. of the magistrates were in favour of the reintroduction of judicial corporal punishment, and over 70 per cent. of the witnesses who appeared before the Barry Committee were stated to be in favour of judicial corporal punishment, especially for juveniles. The opinion of the magistrates is of special importance, because in 1948 the great majority of magistrates were persuaded to believe that judicial corporal punishment was no longer necessary, and this very marked change of opinion is the result of their practical experience in the courts since 1948.

The Barry Committee states on page 2 of its Report that until 1948 the courts retained the power to order judicial corporal punishment for boys under 14 convicted summarily of any indictable offence, and for boys under 16 convicted of certain offences against the person. In the next paragraph, there is a statement which has been widely quoted and which has led to some misapprehensions. It states: For juveniles, the use of corporal punishment had almost died out by 1938. The Report goes on to refer to the figures in Appendix B, which gives the number of sentences of judicial corporal punishment on juveniles from 1930 onwards. This Appendix makes it clear that sentences of judicial corporal punishment on juveniles after 1938 were more numerous than in the eight years before that date, the actual figures being 1,254 in the eight years 1930–38, rising to 1,445 sentences on juveniles in the next eight years, an increase of about 15 per cent. In other words, the Appendix makes it clear that judicial corporal punishment for juveniles had by no means died out in 1938. I wrote and asked the Chairman of the Committee what this sentence was intended to convey. He replied explaining that it referred to the date of the publication of the Cadogan Committee's Report, and so it would appear that the sentence in question was not intended to suggest that juvenile corporal punishment ceased to be used on juveniles in 1938.

In fairness to the Committee, I must make it clear that no one who reads that sentence in conjunction with the appendix could possibly be misled even for a moment. But unfortunately it is not everyone who reads appendices to reports. This ambiguous statement has been widely quoted in speeches and broadcasts and has given the false impression that judicial corporal punishment for juveniles went out of use before the war. This is important, because there was a marked increase in juvenile violence during the war which was mastered by a corresponding increase in judicial corporal punishment.

By 1944 and 1945 this wave of violence was beginning to decrease and with it the need for corporal punishment. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary told me that in the two years before 1948, when the courts lost power to order corporal punishment, offences of violence by juveniles showed a decrease of 29 per cent., and that in the two years after 1948 offences of violence by juveniles showed an increase of no less than 38 per cent. That was a significant change of trend at the very moment when the courts lost the power to order corporal punishment and it constitutes precisely the second condition set out by the Cadogan Committee—and that to a very marked degree.

In the same year, 1948, cases of assault against the person, which had fallen to a very low figure, actually doubled and showed a further increase of 50 per cent. in the following year. That is to say, these offences trebled in two years when the courts lost power to order corporal punishment. Similarly, cases of malicious wounding, which reached a peak in 1945, showed a 20 per cent. increase in 1948. There has been a further increase every year since then. Last year there were over 12,000 cases of malicious wounding. Cases of felonious wounding—which is a more serious offence—brought the total of woundings to over 14,000 last year. This was an average of more than 270 a week.

We have now to consider the two other conditions put forward by the Cadogan Committee and, for the benefit of any committee which I hope will be appointed, the answer will be found in statistics from the Isle of Man. I have been in touch with the authorities in the Isle of Man, where neither the method of recording convictions nor the substance of the criminal law are appreciably different from the practice on the mainland, except so far as they relate to corporal punishment.

At first sight, it is not easy to relate criminal statistics for the Isle of Man to the mainland, because the permanent population is no more than about 50,000, which is about 1,000th of the population of the mainland. But, of course, this figure of 50,000 is swollen during the summer months to over half a million, and this influx of visitors makes its own contribution to the criminal problems and statistics of the Isle of Man. If we multiply the Isle of Man's criminal figures by 1,000, we bring them into line with those of the mainland. But this is to assume that every offence on the island is committed by one of the permanent inhabitants and none by visitors, Thus, this form of calculation is somewhat unfair in representing the criminal propensities of the population of the Isle of Man as being higher than is the case.

Let us suppose, however, that all indictable offences of violence are committed by residents of the Isle of Man. Even multiplying their figures by 1,000, their record is still infinitely better than the record of the mainland. Offences of violence for which corporal punishment can be awarded on the island total 52 in the last ten years; multiply that figure by 1,000 and we get a total of 52,000. On the mainland, of cases of wounding alone, there were about 10,000 offences every year, which is double the average of all offences of violence committed on the island, even after allowing for the difference in size of the population.

This abundantly fulfils the first condition set out by the Cadogan Committee and adapted by the Barry Committee. For juvenile offences the figures are even more striking. The total number of juvenile offences of violence in the Isle of Man in the last ten years were one-seventeenth of the number committed by juveniles on the mainland in last year alone, after allowing for the difference in population. The difference, therefore, is very striking.

The Isle of Man statistics also fulfil the last of the three conditions because here it was discovered that youths between 17 and 21 years of age were committing increasing numbers of aggravated assaults, and this was an offence for which up to two years ago they could not be beaten. By the summary Jurisdiction Act of March. 1960, the Isle of Man gave their courts the power to beat for this offence. This power was used. I think that five out of six of the first offences of this nature which came before the courts resulted in corporal punishment, and the incidence of these offences immediately dropped by 33 per cent. in the first twelve months.

Here again we have a marked change of trend. Where there was an increase of violence, and corporal punishment was extended to cover these offences there was immediately a decrease, just as in 1948 on the mainland, where there was a decrease, and corporal punishment ceased to be permitted, there was a very sharp change to an increase. I might say that all difficulties with regard to the infliction of corporal punishment in the Isle of Man are overcome shortly and simply, and the Committee will have no difficulty in getting information on this point.

To overcome the difficulties involved in waiting for an appeal, the Committee might consider the advantages of a suspended sentence, corporal punishment to be carried out in the event of a further conviction for violence within two or three years. The suspended sentence would come into force on a conviction for violence after the time to appeal against the original sentence had expired. In this case the sentence would be carried out on the rising of the court at the time of the second conviction, as is the practice on the Isle of Man. This would be a real deterrent to a young thug because, in the words of Mr. Fyvel's book, the sentence would always be on his mind.

I appreciate that there are technical difficulties in the suggestion. I realise that there are idealistic and legalistic arguments by people who regard it as impossible for us to do on the mainland what so effectively protects the public on the Isle of Man. But I differ from those who regard the public merely as raw material upon which fascinating young criminals weave their patterns of pain and fear. I for one do not regard the public as expendable. I believe it is our duty to give the courts adequate power to protect the public against these young thugs. Against the doubts which may affect some people must be put the tremendous weight of pain and suffering which the public have to bear and the shocking nature of some of these offences which are being committed so regularly.

I hope it will not be suggested that these crimes of violence, whose number has increased so considerably, are not serious crimes. I have had my attention drawn to a great number of the most shocking cases of violence by boys no older than school children, including the most wanton cruelty to younger children, and in many cases lives were endangered. The shocking nature of some of these cases is augmented by the fact that they appear to have been carried out merely in a desire to terrorise or to inflict pain.

It would be wrong to detain the House with examples, of which I have the most formidable list, but I will mention one or two. Two boys aged 10 and 12 met two 5-year-olds on a lonely spot. They tied up the boy and beat the girl with an iron bar, taking turns to do so, for a period estimated at about an hour. The doctor who treated her injuries said that it was one of the worst assaults of his experience. A 10-year-old boy attempted to murder a child of three by strangulation and would have succeeded but for artificial respiration. This was a case of bullying because he had lost his temper, as he had done many times before.

There have been dozens of similar cases, dealt with almost invariably by probation or nominal fines because the children concerned were honest and came from good homes and were considered unsuitable for institutional treatment.

Mr. Godfrey Lagden (Hornchurch)

Can my hon. Friend tell us what penalty was inflicted in the first of the two cases which he has just mentioned, which were terrible cases?

Sir R. Glyn

I understand that one child was put in care and the other was put on probation.

Thirteen-year-old schoolboys have been convicted on many occasions for wounding and vicious assaults on younger children who have been deliberately and painfully burned and, in some cases, had initials carved on them. At the age of 14 many schoolboys have quite formidable records of violence and have never been sent to an institution.

One such boy was put on probation at the age of 12 for attacking a woman. A year later, while still on probation, he committed another offence and was put on probation a second time. On a third occasion, while still on probation, he entered a dwelling house in which a young housewife was alone, produced a knife, forced her upstairs and acted in such a way that he was convicted of wounding and of assaulting her with intent to ravish. Then, at last, he was sent to an institution.

The plain fact is that the courts have not adequate powers to deter these vicious young schoolchildren who are committing crimes formerly committed only by adults. Only a tiny proportion of the modern generation is behaving in this way, but over and over again it is being done. Groups of schoolboys go out with weapons at night looking for what they call excitement, which takes the form of injuring some innocent fellow citizen.

Another very serious aspect of this problem is the increase in savage and brutal attacks on dumb animals. Our courts are not equipped to deal with sadistic but honest boys such as those who took an air gun and deliberately shot out the eyes of a horse in a recent case. Whether a fine or probation is suitable retribution in such cases is a matter of opinion, but it is a matter about which some people have strong opinions. Neither sex, age nor infirmity provides protection against these vicious youths who know no pity for anyone weaker than themselves.

Some months ago a youth watched a blind man tap his way towards a public lavatory. Many people would have felt compassion, but the Teddy boy concerned saw only a chance to inflict pain. He followed the blind man, a complete stranger, and, for no explained reason, according to the evidence, kneed him in the groin, punched him in the stomach, butted him in the face, banged his head against a wall and left him lying bleeding on the ground.

I for one do not believe that such boys are susceptible to argument or to gentle persuasion. A way must be found to protect the public against such vicious young thugs. I am not anxious to see boys beaten but merely wish to see the public protected. On the Isle of Man, no one, however old or infirm, is afraid to answer the door after dark. In many parts of England people will not answer the door at night, and, as my right hon. Friend agreed, with good reason.

In the name of humanity, I appeal to my right hon. Friend to take effective action, and without delay.

3.24 p.m.

Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East)

As time is short, I intervene only very briefly. The hon. Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) has given us many statistics about juvenile crime and crimes of violence. I am sure that none of us would wish to under-estimate the effect which they are having on certain sections of the public, but I do not think the hon. Gentleman is justified in drawing the conclusion that he has drawn.

There is no evidence that public opinion would support the reintroduction of corporal punishment judicially inflicted. I think that, apart from some agitated sections of opinion at Conservative Party conferences, public opinion generally is that the real deterrent is certainty of conviction, that the new Act recently passed should be given a fair trial and that it would be a brutalising, degrading and reactionary step to reintroduce flogging and birching.

3.25 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke)

This is certainly a serious subject and we all agree in deploring the serious crimes that my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) has mentioned. I should begin by telling the House that the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, which has been engaged for some time in studying crimes of violence, is soon to publish its report. I am sure that it will throw valuable light on these questions.

My hon. Friend told us that the number of male offenders under the age of 17 found guilty of violence against the person was increasing in every year and, in 1960, was six times what it had been in 1948. That is perfectly true, but in all these statistics one has to be very careful to compare like with like and to make allowances for various differences which a mere statement of statistics may conceal.

My hon. Friend said, for example, that the figures for crimes of violence in the Isle of Man are infinitely better than those for England and Wales. That may well be. I dare say that they are considerably better in North Dorset than they are for England and Wales. They are certainly better in the Darwen division of Lancashire than they are for the United Kingdom or for England and Wales as a whole. Therefore, a mere comparison of different areas is somewhat misleading.

Part of the explanation of this enormous increase lies in the natural increase in our population. The total number of males under the age of 17 is estimated to have been about 2½ million in 1948 and well over 3 million in 1960, a very large increase. Furthermore, it is, I think, generally accepted that there is a greater readiness to prosecute for violence which arises from disorderly conduct among young people. This is borne out by the fact that among offenders under the age of 17, the number of convictions for misdemeanours—on the whole, the less serious offences—has risen much faster than the number of convictions for felonies, which, as a proportion of the total number of convictions for offences of violence against the person, has fallen from 12 per cent. in 1948 to 6 per cent. in 1960. That is to say, the proportion of the more serious crimes of violence has fallen and the less serious ones have risen.

I also ask the House not to be misled by the term "offences of violence against the person". In comparing the trend of our criminal statistics from year to year, it is obviously convenient to group offences in certain broad cate- gories, but, inevitably, each group of offences turns out to be much more heterogeneous than its name suggests. Offences of violence against the person include some, like the procuring of abortion or the concealment of birth, which in ordinary parlance are not crimes of violence at all.

The other offences which sound more violent, such as felonious or malicious wounding, do not all arise from assaults of the serious and brutal kind that my hon. Friend has in mind. Most offences of this kind committed by offenders under the age of 17 are the outcome of fights and brawls among adolescent boys such as have always been common in tough neighbourhoods. The proportion of offences that involve shooting or stabbing is very small.

My hon. Friend implied, if he did not say, that many juvenile offenders who are found guilty of offences of violence against the person are found to have long records of previous similar offences, but no convictions for any form of dishonesty. I am informed that about three-quarters of the offenders in question—that is to say, those who are found guilty of offences of violence against the person—have never been previously found guilty of an offence of any kind and that of the remaining one-quarter, those who have a record, almost all have previous convictions for offences of dishonesty.

It is certainly true that where a boy has been found guilty of an offence of violence against the person and has never previously been found guilty of any offence the court will usually deal with him by granting an absolute or conditional discharge, imposing a fine or making a probation order, but that is equally true where a first offender is found guilty of larceny or some other offence involving dishonesty. It is not merely that the courts wish to save a first offender from being contaminated by others more advanced in delinquency, though that consideration is, naturally, present to their minds. It is rather that where, as with a first offender from a a reasonably stable home, probation and other forms of non-institutional treatment stand a good chance of success the court simply does not feel justified in removing the boy from his home.

Among individual cases my hon. Friend quoted as an example that of a boy aged 16 found guilty of manslaughter at the Old Bailey last year. Thanks to the courtesy of my hon. Friend in letting me know he was going to do this I have been able to obtain full details of it, and the information which I have obtained may serve to present it to him and the House in a rather different light.

The boy was a student at a technical college where he attended a class in bakery as part of his training as an apprentice. On the day of the offence he had received a good deal of baiting from the boy whom he killed, which constituted sufficent provocation for the offender's plea of not guilty to the original charge of murder to be accepted by the prosecution with the approval of the court. The offence was committed with a baker's knife which the boy had brought to use in the class. He had no previous finding of guilt for any kind of offence and his character was described as excellent.

In putting him on probation the judge is reported to have said: I am now satisfied that there are quite exceptional circumstances in this case which enable me to take a course which at one time I thought it would be quite impossible to take. While I would not seek in any way to minimise or condone the seriousness of such an offence I submit that such an unpremeditated act, the outcome of no small provocation, is not typical of the kind of offence my hon. Friend has stressed and the phrase "crimes of violence" suggests.

I have no reason to think that the courts are in general reluctant to commit offenders to some suitable form of institutional training. My hon. Friend instanced some statistics from detention centres from which he inferred that there were very few present in those detention centres who had committed crimes of violence. Out of 900 in one case he found only three who had committed crimes of violence. It is, however, not true that youths who commit crimes of violence are not being sent to detention centres. Of about 2,300 persons committed to detention centres in 1961 about 300 had been convicted of the offence of violence against the person.

That may seem a small percentage, but crimes of violence are a small per- centage, and those 300, compared with 2,300, represent a considerably larger proportion than the proportion of offenders who commit crimes of violence against the person to offenders in general. Nor is it true that the higher courts do not in practice commit to detention centres. In 1960, the last full year for which figures are available, 356 persons were sent to detention centres by assizes or quarter sessions.

There is, of course, a grave shortage still of places in our approved schools and detention centres and the expansion has not kept pace with the number of offenders whom the courts think suitable for this sort of treatment. We are doing our best to catch up. An approved school programme of over £8 million was put in hand in 1960 and quite recently certificates for the approval of two new schools have been granted. As for detention centres, the Prison Commissioners now have seven for offenders aged between 17 and under 21, where the demand is greatest, to which they hope to add three more this summer; and at least two more centres are to be provided for the under-17s. It is my right hon. Friend's intention eventually to make a senior and a junior detention centre available to every court. The provision of additional senior centres has also enabled him to reduce the area served by each of the existing centres and so to increase the number of places available to any particular court.

I will not weary the House, because we have already overlapped our ration of time, on the question of non-institutional treatment, except to refer to my hon. Friend's moving, but, I thought, misguided, plea for the reintroduction of corporal punishment. All I can say to him on that point at this stage is that this subject has raged furiously inside the Houses of Parliament and in the country over the last two or three years. At the end of it all, I think it right to say that both Houses of Parliament and the conferences of all three of the major political parties have decisively come down in the end against such a recommendation. I do not think that, at any rate for some time, it is the sort of controversy that can conceivably be reopened by the appointment of yet another committee on the lines which my hon. Friend desires.

To sum up, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend's fears and with his approach to the seriousness of this problem. There has been a steep rise in the number of males under 17 found guilty of offences of violence against the person, but this does not necessarily indicate an equally steep rise in the number of such offences being committed by juveniles and still less of crimes of violence as the term is generally understood. My right hon. Friend is pressing on with the provision of better facilities which, in the light of the best advice available to him, he considers likely to be effective.

It is too early to talk of success or failure when so much remains to be done, not only in the treatment of juvenile offenders but in the prevention of juvenile crime, a task which my right hon. Friend has often said must engage the resources not only of the Government and of the courts, not only of the machinery and of officials, and not only of us in Parliament, but of all people in all the counties and all the towns and of the community as a whole. That is the answer to this crime wave and that is, I believe, the only way in which this problem can be solved.