Member

We can quantify other harms caused by criminalising children as young as 10. The number of children aged 10 to 14 convicted each year is, I think, between 3,000 and 3,500. Last year, it was 3,175—about 25% of all convicted children. In total, we sentence about 1.2 million people each year in England and Wales. Therefore, a quarter of 1% of proven criminality is conducted by children under 14, and it is overwhelmingly of a less serious nature. However, the impact on those children is disproportionate. Almost two-thirds of children remanded in custody do not receive a custodial sentence, placing them unnecessarily into a harsh penal environment and robbing them of education, family and childhood. For those kept in that system, they can expect violence, unlawful detention in cells for all hours of the day, and, if they resist, weaponry in the form of pepper spray, which can now be deployed on them following the Howard League’s failed attempt to legally challenge its use. With such poor interventions, it is no wonder that over 30% of 10 to 14 year-olds will re-offend. Instead of our justice system preventing further crime, it seems only to generate it in the young. It is no place for small children.