Juvenile Offenders (Hansard, 18 May 1995)

§ 7. Mr. Booth
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to help the police and courts to deal with the most persistent juvenile offenders. [23552]

§ Mr. Maclean
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 contains important new measures to deal with juvenile criminals. The secure training order will provide a vigorous regime based on education and discipline for persistent juvenile offenders. Invitations to tender for the first two secure training centres were issued at the end of March.

§ Mr. Booth
Does my hon. Friend agree that much of the recent success in tackling juvenile crime has resulted from the implementation of our policies, following sensible advice from the police that we should target the young lads most likely to commit crime? If the Labour party had been in power, we would not have achieved such success, not least because, time after time, it votes against our sensible reforms.

§ Mr. Maclean
That is absolutely true. Last week I visited a police service where, in one division alone, there had been 946 burglaries in 1993 but only eight last year. That was due to the policy of targeting the individuals involved and the imprisonment of four persistent burglars responsible. However, we all remember the howls of outrage from the Labour party when my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary said that prison works. It certainly worked by taking those persistent burglars out of circulation.

§ Mr. Michael
Will the Minister set aside his complacency and accept that it is about time that he did something to cut juvenile crime by providing the legal framework for an active partnership involving the police, local authorities and local communities to tackle crime, by accepting our proposals to nip problems in the bud in respect of young offenders and by providing the secure places that we were promised in February 1991 but which have still not been provided?

§ Mr. Maclean
It is no wonder that the whole country understands what is meant when we say that the Labour party is a policy-free zone. If someone were to interpret what the hon. Gentleman just said, I might like some of it. He fails to tell the House that the Opposition have consistently voted against all the key laws that we have passed to tackle crime and offending. In the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, we took the powers to deal with offending on bail and to do drug tests in prison while the Labour party, which says that it wants to be tough on crime and the causes of crime, abstained on Second Reading and toughly abstained on Third Reading.

§ Sir Ivan Lawrence
Does my hon. Friend agree that bad families and bad peer influence has a considerable effect on juvenile delinquency and that the success in 459 dealing with juvenile delinquents in the United States has required taking youngsters away from their bad backgrounds for rather longer than is contemplated in the secure training orders? Will he keep an open mind about the effectiveness of that course of action and keep a close watch on the successes that are appearing in some parts of the United States?

§ Mr. Maclean
My hon. and learned Friend may be absolutely right. I seem to recall that when the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill was going through the House we were under pressure from some quarters to have much shorter periods of secure detention. We rightly made the point that if the period was too short it would not be possible to achieve anything with a youngster, to educate him or her or to rehabilitate youngsters. I shall certainly bear in mind what my hon. and learned Friend has said. If we can take persistent troublemakers out of circulation and keep them out for long enough, not only will the public get respite from their awful offending but there will be a chance to make something of them.