Rise in child prisoners is blamed on Bulger case

The number of teenagers being locked up has increased sharply in the past decade because of a hardening in attitudes towards young offenders caused by the murder of James Bulger, a crime reduction charity warns today.

Nacro said the number of under-15s placed in custody leapt eight-fold because of draconian laws passed by politicians playing to the gallery. The trend threatened to put the Government in breach of United Nations conventions, it added.

Condemning the youth incarceration rate as shocking, Nacro accused the Government of failing in its aim of limiting the number of children being locked up.

In a report published today, Nacro blamed the rise in child imprisonment on a "rush to custody". Individual cases such as the Bulger murder 10 years ago had been more widely publicised than before, leading to heightened public anxiety over an apparent epidemic of juvenile offending.

The report said politicians "seeking to establish themselves as guardians of law and order" had responded with "draconian legislation, harsher sentencing and tough interventions".

The number of juveniles locked up in England and Wales had risen from 4,000 a year in 1992 to 7,600 10 years later, while the remanded population rose by 142 per cent. Over the same period, the total of under-15s in custody increased from 100 to 800.

At any one time, more than 3,000 under-18s are in custody, a higher proportion than any western European country except Germany.

The Nacro report, A failure of justice – reducing child imprisonment, said the levels of child imprisonment constitute a continued breach of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. It said the figures were "all the more shocking" because rates of youth offending were falling over the period.

The report tells of ethnic and regional variations in the numbers of children imprisoned. About 18 per cent of children in custody were classified as black or black British.

Nacro said it acknowledged the need to protect the community from dangerous and persistent offenders, but warned that incarceration was likely to lead to more crime, rather than less.

Lord Carlile of Berriew, chairman of its committee on children and crime and a recorder since 1986, said: "It is a national disgrace that incarcerating children is viewed as anything but a last resort in response to the problem of juvenile crime. The UK continues to flout international conventions on children's rights by locking up increasingly young children for considerably less serious crimes than was the case a decade ago."

He said the position could deteriorate further because the Government recently helped courts to sentence offenders aged 12 to 15 to lengthy periods in custody for relatively minor crimes.

* The only prison unit in England and Wales exclusively for elderly criminals provides "unacceptable" conditions for its inmates, Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, will say today. HMP Kingston, at Portsmouth, had "serious deficiencies" that needed urgent attention. "Cells were effectively cubicles, divided by partitions." Movement was severely restricted and there was insufficient privacy.