Today’s speech was about fighting crime – again. This time it was at a Local Government Association event, with a particular focus on young people.
Three kids wearing hoodies walking down the street towards you. What do you see? Three people about to mug you? Just another three people passing on the pavement? Or three kids whose birthdays you know? And who do they see in you? A suspicious stranger who doesn’t like them? Or a neighbour they say hello to?
It’s in that range of different actions and reactions that sits so many of the issues around youth crime and fear of youth crime – why it takes place, what its impact is and how to tackle it. It’s about how to tackle the evil-minded, how to reduce irrational fear – and also – and crucially – about how to build happy, cohesive communities where people are free to do there own thing – but also get along with, rather than fear, their neighbours.
So I am grateful to the Local Government Association for bringing us together to discuss this important topic and for inviting me to open this debate.
As an MP that represents an inner London constituency where our youth crime has become a national headline issue with stabbings and gang violence on the door step – answering the question of what we can do to tackle youth criminality is of great concern to me and my constituents.
And as our party’s Youth & Equalities spokesperson, I have been vocal is pressing our pro-youth agenda as opposed to the anti-youth agenda that dominates the news and the rhetoric of Labour and the Tories.
My third role and one that is perhaps less public is my continued and personal interest in home affairs issues. It’s really the area in which I cut my teeth as an MP, and I’m now a co-opted member of our the Home Affairs team in Parliament. I was pleased recently to endorse Chris Huhne’s new policy proposal on youth justice and crime.
The paper was called: “A life away from crime – a new approach to youth justice” – which I think goes someway in answering the question the LGA have set: is the balance right between prevention and enforcement?
The simple answer is no. Better enforcement simply will never be enough in itself.
We know this from some of the crime fighting successes – most notably cutting car thefts by making cars harder to steal, and not just trying to catch and punish car thieves. It’s been a similar issue with mobile phone thefts – yes, high profile policing has its role, but making a stolen phone unusable has a much bigger impact.
We also know this from a simple thought process: imagine a massively successful drive to better enforcement, with five times as many crimes resulting in a court punishment than at the moment. That’d be a pretty impressive leap forward wouldn’t it? But only around 1 in 100 crimes is punished in court at the moment. So we’d be multiplying up hugely the number of court cases and – even with any changes in sentencing rules – the number of people going to jail. And yet – both our courts and prison services are already hugely overloaded and frequently at breaking point. And in the end? We’d only have upped that figure from 1 in 100 to 5 in 100.
This isn’t just theoretical – we’ve seen a massive 86% rise in the number of 15 – 17 years in custody, and yet youth criminality remains the weeping sore of public policy. Because as the courts and jail services crack under the numbers, rehabilitation suffers, reoffending rates go up and crime doesn’t fall.
If you want to cut crime, we need to stop people committing it not just be punishing but also by preventing. That’s why I – and my party – are so keen to drastically increase spending on youth service provision. We have plenty of ideas of how increased spending would be spent. But sadly we seem alone in the national parties in advocating a coherent set policy that would see a significant redistribution of resources in favour of spending money on youth services to prevent crime in the first place.
The logic of this seems indisputable and the finances alone are pretty sound – preventing crime saves on money further through the judicial and criminal systems. In any question of how public resources should be allocated – prevention is always better than cure – if for no other reason than that it is cheaper. There are many five star hotels that are cheaper than a night at young offenders’ institution.
Our Home Affairs paper sets out clearly how we would charge local councils to draw up Youth Community Plans for more youth activity. But more radical than that, we would want to pass real spending powers to youth councils and the Youth Parliament.
Let’s be honest – what does a group of crusty councillors and politicians like myself know about providing service that will really capture the imagination of young people and instill the idea that there are alternatives to crime? A dilapidated youth centre, with ping pong and servicing Kia-Ora and a few stale biscuits is not going to cut the mustard with any self respecting teenager.
Another part of prevention is getting knives and guns off the streets. I have little doubt that this can be achieved by intelligence-led policing. Whilst not a new policy, the Liberal Democrat position of 10,000 more police officers instead of ID cards is relevant to our discussion. These officers, with youth dedicated PCSOs and neighbourhood teams, would be better placed to identify young people carrying offensive weapons.
And then there is rehabilitation, where local authorities have a pivotal role to play in rehabilitation. Whilst some young offenders do require incarceration where public safety as risk, prisons for young people just don’t work. Whilst they might create a few months respite for the communities plagued by antisocial behaviour, just think of how more anti-social those people are with the skills they have learnt on the inside.
Punishing someone for a crime in the past, but setting them up to offend many more times in the future is just short-sighted – vindictive rather than effective.
Liberal Democrats in Islington led the way with successful Acceptable Behaviour Contracts, which have slowed superseded ASBOs. The point is to work with the young person in addressing the causing of the problem and to set realistic targets – looking not just to remedying the past but also to stopping more crimes being committed in the future.
Anyway, I have spoken enough. I am keen to hear about successful ideas from the floor of how your local authorities have been addressing this issue.
But just to conclude. There is no silver bullet. It is a situation that is exacerbated by gimmicks and political attempts to steal the headlines by out toughing each other.
But that is just part of the story. I think at the heart of liberalism is the genuine belief of personal freedom – and one of those
f
reedoms is to be young. If we continue to demonise our youth, neglect public service provision and treat young criminals as outcasts is it little wonder they will turn their backs on us and ignore the rules we set.
Lynne Featherstone 
A very interesting speech Lynne. It is good to see how much thought goes into these ideas beyond the soundbites that get reported in the media.
Hi Lynne. Your ideas about better youth services are obviously right but how can it be done? Youth leaders are scared to come forward because they might be thought to have private ulterior motives.The cherished freedoms you mention are in fact responsible for much of the misbehaviour we all deplore. I spoke to some young vandals a while ago and amongst the obscenities in their replies I made out the words “You can’t do nothing to me mister”. Which is true, for the teachers and everyone else.You can only safely give responsibility to people who are responsible. Others need guidance and nothing seems to have been found as yet to replace the head teacher’s cane.
Lynne, It’s about time that people were able to blame the ferral children instead of blaming teachers and “education has failed them” and certainly stop ignoring well-behaved children in preference to those that are called “disaffected”. And the real problem is that politicians don’t want to talk to the well behaved working class child, and how disturbed and angry they feel that their education and enjoyment of education is stopped by the “disaffected” yoot. Or their bus journey home or their local parks broken and graffitied or their lives stuck at home in case a ferral yoot tries to steal from them.In general the disaffected are a below standard reading age, come from dysfunctional families and a long line of disaffected yoots. The ludicrous scenario of social services and the politicians is that we would not go to peudophiles for advice on childcare, so why do you endlessly go to the most disruptive, rude and ‘useless’ individuals in society to ask them what they want? Er..let’s guess, “a youf club with a pool table and ya know, a talent show just like on America’s got Talent” and when they go home to the squalid undecorated dirty homes? There is a designer pair of trainers, sky TV and dog pooh in the carpet. They have money and a home, and food and possessions, but they just don’t have a sense of self-respect.Who said that asking those who are the least cooperative, the least giving, the least society-conscious, should be listened to at all? Ask the poor who are trying to make a better life if they want the ASBO family to be kicked off and out of the estates and you will hear a resounding “YES!”. The sad thing is the courts don’t ask them to clean up the crap after them – because the politicians would find it too expensive to guard/supervise the ferrals to do it. MAKE UP YOUR MIND, EITHER YOU PUT THE MONEY INTO MAKING THEM BEHAVE OR YOU JUST GIVE THEM A YOOT CLUB SO THEY CAN CONTINUE TO BELIEVE THAT THEY HAVE GOT AWAY WITH IT. Youth workers like social workers really don’t have the ability to force, cajole or penalise – except in the same manner as schools: exclusions or “forfeits”. For the working class children whose lives are constantly disrupted by thugs and thieves of their own age, you tell them that there is ‘no such thing as society’ because society is more about giving more and more bribes to the badly behaved. Stop “listening” and start “making”.