Government misses main target on youth crime

Labour has missed a central target on law and order, ministers have been told in a Whitehall report on the fast-tracking of persistent young offenders in the criminal justice system.

The findings will embarrass the Government because the target was one of the five key promises written on Labour's pledge card issued at the 1997 general election. Labour promised to halve the time taken between the arrest and sentence of all persistent young offenders by the end of last year, from 142 days to 71 days.

Ministers first met the target by September 2001 but the latest report says the average time from arrest to sentence for persistent young offenders in England and Wales was 72 days for January 2003, three days more than the revised figure for December 2002. The statistics also reveal wide variations across the country, with crown courts taking longer to process defendants than magistrates' courts.

Yesterday MPs, lawyers and probation officers were quick to condemn ministers for setting such an "arbitrary" target and trying to force it through at the expense of the rest of the criminal justice system.

Edward Garnier QC, a Conservative MP and crown court judge, said ministers believed that the setting of the target was more important than actually achieving it. "People have become very cynical because so many of these targets have been forgotten,"he said.

Harry Fletcher, of the probation union Napo, said the lack of resources had left the criminal justice system in a shambles. He said: "It's important that everybody in the criminal justice system is dealt with quickly, not just a select few. These arbitrary targets only serve to make everything cock-eyed."

Rodney Warren, director of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, said the targets on persistent young offenders were being met only at the expense of justice in the whole of the criminal justice system.

"Delays for adult offenders are greater and the police can massage the figures by keeping suspects on longer bail terms before they decide to charge them. What is important here is not targets but securing fair convictions. Justice is much more than the express train of getting the cases through the system on time."

A spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's Department said: "The department still has the opportunity to meet the target for 2003 as a whole and it must be remembered that the target has been hit for the past 14 months." He added that surveys showed that since 1999 all offenders were spending less time between arrest and sentence. But last year the department's own report showed that in the past year the average time between an offence being committed and the sentencing of a defendant had increased by a week to 143 days, a day longer than when Labour was elected in 1997.

The Tories and Liberal Democrats have begun campaigns to expose Labour's missed targets and the Commons Public Administration Committee, chaired by the Labour MP Tony Wright, has opened an investigation.