Arresting children

Those of you who follow our work closely will have noticed that we have conducted research and published more on the issue of policing, particularly policing of children. This is going to be an increasing focus of our work over the next year or two. The simple reason is that the police are the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system and if we can solve a problem at the first stage, we can halt the downward spiral into an expensive and ineffective response.

Some years ago we got involved in the case of a young girl who had been sent to prison for six months for assaulting a police officer. We were helping her appeal her sentence. She had gone into a local newsagent with friends and had been caught stealing sweets. The shopkeeper grabbed hold of her and pushed her into a back room and locked her in whilst he called the police. She became very upset and frightened. When the police arrived, the two burly chaps confronted the girl very aggressively and she became even more upset, and spat at them. She was arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced. This story became the trigger for a programme of crime prevention the Howard League set up in schools, ostensibly to help young people learn how the criminal justice system works and what crime means, but actually to put police and other authorities alongside young people to learn how not to make things worse. More than 3,000 practitioners from the system gave up two days of their time to work with 20,000 children in schools on the highly structured programme we developed.

I am retelling the story now because this sort of contretemps still happens, and it shouldn’t. Towards the end of last year two chief constables gave evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women in the Penal System for its inquiry into girls and the penal system. The chief constables related how they were encouraging their front line officers to resolve things, not to head straight for the arrest and confrontation route.

Fewer and fewer children are being arrested and this is wonderful news because we don’t want young people to get a criminal record or to experience the trauma of a court room when it is not necessary. We are going to be carrying out more research and launching a major campaign to build on our years of experience of working with young people and of working with the police. The direction of travel is already correct, but we can and will help to quicken it.

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February 21, 2012 · Frances Crook · No Comments
Tags: APPG on women in the penal system, Police, youth justice · Posted in: Children and young people, Police