Deborah Orr: Humiliating kids isn't the answer to crime

Usually, in criminal justice parlance, a "distraction technique" is a procedure that sanctions the application of "a short burst of pain" to the nose, thumb or ribs of a child in custody. This week, however, the entire nation is being subjected to a more generalised "distraction technique", with the publication of a Cabinet Office-commissioned report looking at how the Government can "restore confidence in the criminal justice system".

As is traditional, the report has been leaked, with some of its more colourful suggestions gaining much media prominence. Chief among these is a proposal that people doing community service should wear coloured tabards so that everyone knows they are being punished, and a proposal that "Convicted!" posters should be put up locally so that justice can be seen to be done.

All this has brought a "short burst of pain" to liberal Britain, which, as usual, is worrying far too much about the poor mites in the bibs, and not enough about the communities bearing the brunt of antisocial behaviour.

Clearly, deprived communities would be greatly enhanced if they had "Convicted!" posters hung up all round them, and worries about the local environment would be hugely soothed if it was made really plain that the railings were such a low council priority that it was considered a punishment to be charged with painting them.

Of course, these minor difficulties would be self-correcting anyway. "Convicted!" posters, for example, would be removed as quickly as they could be put up by eager community members keen to come by free yet valuable gifts for those depicted on them. All those who believe that habitual offenders can be humiliated into submission would do well to ponder on the abstruse meaning behind the gnomic title of Paul Abbott's popular television series, Shameless.

Likewise, community service – suggested new title "community payback" – most probably would face even bigger problems than it does already with people simply not turning up to do it. But this logistical difficulty would be dealt with anyway, as the administration of community payback would be taken out of the hands of the probation service – with its namby-pamby emphasis on rehabilitation – and placed in the hands of private companies and charities.

These organisations would somehow be much better equipped to go round to the homes of reluctant miscreants and march them off in their zany hair-shirts, five days a week (or evening and weekends if they are employed).

Frankly, the report sounds like rubbish, although it does have one really good pointer in it. It says that people do not feel they are told enough about the criminal justice system. Maybe, just maybe, Gordon Brown ought to consider the possibility that he might, at some spare moment, share his thoughts on crime with the nation.

Of course, the Government does tell us about crime. It tells us that crime is falling, and it has statistics that prove it. It must be very frustrating that no one believes this, when it is absolutely true. But that is because, as any fools knows, statistics don't tell the whole story.

What people were most concerned about when Labour took power was youth crime. That is why, very early on, the Government reformed youth justice, under Jack Straw, and brought in the present system, which is overseen by the Youth Justice Board (YJB), and co-ordinated at local level by youth offending teams.

What people now perceive, nearly 10 years on, is that this new arrangement cannot have succeeded in its primary remit, which was to prevent youth crime and prevent youth re-offending. This perception is quite correct, as a report from the YJB itself confirmed last month.

Violent crime by young people has risen by 39 per cent in the past three years, up from 40,000 offences in 2003-04 to more than 56,000 in 2006-07. More generally, re-offending rates have not been dented. This is particularly parlous as spending on youth justice grew by 45 per cent in the years 2000-07, with the lion's share of that sum being spent on incarceration.

So what's the solution? More leaky little drips, this time in advance of a youth crime action plan to be published by the Home Office this summer, suggest that some people in Government are finally twigging that the present youth justice arrangements aren't working. Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, it is reported, is among those who want "a failing punitive policy replaced by a more welfare-oriented, early-intervention approach to dealing with children in trouble".

In other words, he is minded to believe what was said in a 2004 Audit Commission Report, and in a more recent, more trenchant and more authoritative Centre For Crime and Justice Studies report: that the focus on criminal justice has drawn funds away from social investment. Prevention, in other words, on which the YJB has been spending just 5 per cent of its budget, is better than cure.

Unfortunately, the indications are that the change in direction would be bureaucratically led, with Children's Trusts established in local authorities, designed to bring together all local services for children and young people. Children's Trusts, it is proposed, would be expected to pay for social care – education, accommodation, family counselling and supervision – as well as criminal justice interventions. There would be no more money available. It would simply be hoped that there would be an in-built incentive for the cash to be sliced in a different way.

The change of policy emphasis is welcome, as is the move towards local accountability. But the alleged faith in a shift in mere budgeting priorities as a motor away from the widespread belief that the trouble is too little criminal justice, not too much, is highly optimistic.

Casey's report, with its desire to alight on a modern version of the public stocks, does highlight a real problem. Many people simply aren't ashamed of things they ought to be ashamed of. Why? Largely because they can always find plenty of other people who are doing it too.

The 30-year push for a property-owning democracy of skilled workers has not only marginalised what is less and less often referred to as "the underclass", but has also concentrated it into the areas with the least desirable housing, the fewest amenities, the poorest-performing schools, the most lone parents, with the most visible drug-taking and dealing and so on.

Given this concentration of disadvantage, it would be better to start thinking more seriously about how young people can be sustained in their resistance of criminality, rather than punished for making what too often feels like a logical choice. If Children's Trusts are charged with reducing the number of children in prison, before they even have the funds to start addressing this, I just don't see how they can even begin that work.

d.orr@independent.co.uk

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