Cherie Booth: Keep youths out of prison

The vast majority of young offenders should not be sent to prison, Cherie Booth QC said yesterday, in her first public speaking engagement since the Peter Foster scandal.

Jailing young people would not solve society's problems and they would learn more about the consequences of their crimes through alternatives to jail such as meeting their victims, she said.

Ms Booth, a prominent human rights lawyer, used a lecture on human rights law to argue that too many children in the UK are in prison. She praised Home Office pilot projects that aim to devise alternatives to jail and said there was evidence that schemes such as those bringing offender and victim together had longer lasting benefits.

Other schemes include intensive supervision and tagging, as well as a form of secure fostering with trained foster parents. However, some children's charities have questioned whether foster parents would be prepared to act as an alternative to prison.

Almost 11,000 young people aged under 21 are in jails in England and Wales – about 16 per cent of the total prison population. Of these, 2,646 are under 18, a 17 per cent rise in the past 12 months and almost double the number in 1992.

Ms Booth told the seminar, organised by the British Institute of Human Rights: "I think there are probably always going to be a few children where maybe the solution will have to be custody. We have to look for better solutions for the vast majority of young offenders.

"We cannot expect prison to solve all the problems of society. People who end up in prison are often there because of a cumulative falling through the safety nets of society."