Won't Somebody Lock Up the Children?

A report by some of the forces of conservatism suggests that we might do well to raise the age at which people can be imprisoned. It even has the temerity to infer that Britain's children would be better off outside the chain of taxpayer-funded luxury hotels which constitutes our prison system. The report, which pullulates with words from the kind of unregenerate human resource that New Labour has tried so hard to modernise into oblivion ("campaigners" and "activists" and such), is a product of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, whose values include the strikingly non-British principles that "criminal justice policy should address the crimes of the powerful (both individual and corporate) as well as those associated with the least powerful sections of society", and that "criminal justice policy and practice should treat victims and offenders, suspects and witnesses, with dignity and respect".

The report performs the usual sleight of hand with statistics, claiming that just because Britain has greater numbers of under-eighteens in custody than some European countries this means Britain imprisons more children. A spokesbeing for the Ministry of Having Been Split in Two attempted to perspective the situationality of the matter, saying that "there are no current plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales" because "we are concerned about 10 and 11-year-olds becoming drawn into offending behaviour", something that could never happen to them in prison. Imprisoning people from the age of ten and upwards allows the Ministry of Having Been Split in Two "to intervene early to prevent further offending", which is why our jails are overflowing, "and to help young people develop a sense of personal responsibility for their misbehaviour", unlike some. "The early teenage years", i.e. those prior to the age of thirteen, "are an important, high risk period when timely intervention can make a real difference" whether it's effective or not.

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies is a charity, which makes its attitude all the more depressing since, as we know, the voluntary sector along with private corporations has an increasingly important role in removing the burden of social care from the shoulders of those government departments which were actually set up to carry it.