Sir, Libby Purves (Comment, September 14) raises important questions about the treatment of children in custody.
We have responsibility for commissioning places for young people in custody and deciding in which establishments they are placed.
We face a daily dilemma: how to balance the requirements of the courts, which sometimes seem unrelenting in the number of young people they send to custody, with the need to ensure that once in custody young people are subject to constructive regimes in an environment predicated on child care. Real progress has been made in recent years in this regard but much remains to be done in improving the facilities and regimes provided for them.
There are still too many children in custody. We have developed community-based alternatives and we are gratified by the confidence that those alternatives are beginning to enjoy with sentencers. We are also working with those who provide custody — local authorities, commercial companies and the Prison Service — to make their work more child-centred.
Finally, we welcome the inquiry being set up by the Howard League for Penal Reform in the hope that it will provide a better-informed public debate of the very difficult, sometimes competing, considerations involved.
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The question as to how to safeguard — from themselves and others — the young, difficult and damaged offenders in custody is complex.
Yours faithfully,
ROD MORGAN,
Chairman,
Youth Justice Board,
11 Carteret Street, SW1H 9DL.
September 14.