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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I support these amendments, which get to the heart of one of our concerns about youth justice legislation. To a certain extent, that concern has been understood and answered by the Minister, but there is still some way to go. A number of times we have raised the point that in some cases we are punishing children for whom punishment is quite inappropriate because their lives until now have been nothing but punishment. There is a large body of evidence on the strong link between the past abuse of children and their subsequent disturbed behaviour. The Minister may be aware of the history here. The Youth Justice Board commissioned a report on the past abuse histories of children in custody and then decided not to publish it for a considerable period, although that decision was later reversed. I am sure that the Minister had a hand in that in some way. Recently, I attended a conference of people who were supposed to be, and seemed to be, the leading experts on the consequences of a childhood of growing up in a home where there is domestic violence and the children experience abuse, violence, sexual abuse and so on. It should not be concluded that all children from such backgrounds go on to behave violently. However, many children who behave violently come from a background of abuse, violence and suffering. At quite a large conference of youth justice workers, there was a feeling that past abuse does not figure enough in assessments and decision-making. From that perspective I welcome these amendments. As other noble Lords have said, they attempt to look at each child as an individual, to take more account than we seem to have been able to of what has brought them to the position that they are in, and to consider, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, what is likely to get them to a point where they might be able to throw off their past experiences and to lead a law-abiding life. I support these amendments, which attempt to remind us that many of the young people whom we are dealing with are from such backgrounds.