Schedule 11
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
1:45 pm
David Burrowes (Shadow Minister, Justice; Enfield, Southgate, Conservative)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the amendments and for the way in which the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead approached the debate. I want to restrict my comments to the issue of punishment being part of the youth offending regime in terms of youth conditional cautioning, rather than the issue of a penalty being imposed, which we can perhaps deal with when we discuss the next set of amendments.
The concern expressed by Liberty, but also by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice relates to the principle of punishment being part of the youth offending regime. I do not wish to deal with that debate; I wish to focus on whether punishment is appropriate for a pre-court disposal. The case has already been made that there has been movement. Initially, adult conditional cautions were limited to the purposes of rehabilitation or reparation, but the Police and Justice Act 2006 extended the scheme in order to allow punitive conditions. No doubt the case made by the Government is to extend the youth conditional cautioning to mirror the change within the Police and Justice Act 2006. However, the Government’s cross-departmental review of delivering simple, speedy summary justice in July 2006 said:
“We also intend to legislate for a youth version of the Conditional Caution to provide a robust intervention that requires the young person to take responsibility for formal action to make amends and tackle underlying problems in a supported way.”
No mention is made of the punitive element that is put in place under the Bill.
The Government’s review went on:
“We are working with the Youth Justice Board and the Association of Chief Police Officers to develop effective restorative interventions for first misdemeanours where a formal criminal justice response that forms part of an offender’s criminal record and is declarable to employers would be disproportionate. Getting a young person to apologise face to face and make amends is an important part of their learning. This is not about going soft on crime. A face to face apology is often quite difficult for a young person to do.”
Drawing on earlier arguments, the Government are making the case for extending youth conditional cautions on the back of debates about the restoration and rehabilitation areas of conditional cautioning. They are also slipping in the punitive element to mirror adult conditional cautioning. The most acute issue is that the schedule is a pre-court disposal. It is not so much a matter of whether punishment should be an explicit aim. That was dealt with perhaps not in the most grown up of fashions, nevertheless press releases do not have to be issued this week. We must consider whether punishment should be used and administered pre-court. Most members of the public would expect it to be administered in the proper setting of a court, and that it should receive its appropriate disposal in that manner.
The pre-court disposal in the schedule and youth conditional cautioning would be administered on the recommendation of a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer and then by the police. There would be no involvement or independent involvement of the estate arm. There may well not be legal representation, and it would be left to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to deal with the different functions. They would be dealing with investigation and prosecution, and they would be the judge. All those three hats would be worn in the process of a pre-court disposal.
The amendment asks whether it is appropriate for punishment to be part of youth conditional cautioning, given that it is before the court. That matter seemed to be accepted earlier by the Government until it came to be mirrored by the adult cautioning process. They then seemed to veer back from their original intentions of conditional cautioning in their review of delivering simple, speedy summary justice. We now see in the Bill that they have mirrored the adult conditioning approach and have sought to include a punitive element. That has caused many members of the public, hon. Members and magistrates to worry that the Government’s wish to bring people to justice is focused particularly at the pre-court disposal and, in their effort to seek disposals, justice is very much denied. The fast track to punishment does not necessarily lead to a fast track to justice. I should be interested to know why the Government have changed their approach and feel it necessary to include punishment as part of youth conditional cautioning.