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Antisocial Behaviour

My hon. Friend is quite right. I was about to say that the myriad orders, agencies, new punishments and new sentences from the courts are no substitute for a good, loving home life with proper role models for young men in our communities and proper discipline in schools, so that people learn from a very early age how to behave properly. I think that the House should focus on that. Another issue that is very important to me is literacy. I have a great deal of anecdotal evidence from the courts where I sit. A huge percentage of the youngsters who appear before me—indeed, this is true of many aged between 18 and 25—have real literacy and numeracy problems. A typical example might be a young man, perhaps 20 by now, who comes from a very poor estate where there was no green grass and nowhere to play. He lived four floors up in a block of flats where the lift did not work. His mother was probably addicted to Prozac, and his father or stepfather was probably drunk and knocked him about. He went to school and did not make much of a fist of it. It was not long before he was beginning to get behind in his lessons, and then he began to truant. When he was truanting, he eventually got himself excluded form from school. He would go back occasionally, but then, because he was frustrated with life and could not read and write properly, his behaviour was becoming worse and worse. Finally, he was permanently excluded. Eighty-two per cent. of youngsters under 21 in our young offender institutions have been excluded from school at some stage, and approximately 50 per cent. have been permanently excluded from school. Many of them were excluded because they were disruptive. To a great extent, that disruptive behaviour comes from frustration at their lack of literacy and numeracy. So many youngsters are incarcerated on short sentences—which, by the way, I believe are a complete waste of time and money—in our young offender estate. The levels of literacy and numeracy in the young offender estate are very low indeed. However, in many of our young offender institutions the maximum amount of time spent on education and training is only four hours a week. What the devil is that worth to somebody who goes in there barely able to read or to write his own name? There is also two hours a week on team sport. Call me old-fashioned, but I happen to believe in the merits of team sport—of learning to take a knock and give a knock, and to behave properly. As often as not, those in our young offender institutions are locked up for 17 hours a day, and there is a total lack of emphasis on what is truly important: getting the boys—they are boys—to read, write and become better qualified for life outside. There is also a total lack of emphasis on resettlement. In the last few months of a sentence, we should be striving hard to ensure that every youngster coming out of a young offender institution has somewhere to go—a job to go to, a mentor, a bit of support outside—otherwise there is just a revolving door and they come back inside. The behaviour of a minority of young people is very bad—although most young people are brilliant. However, I firmly believe that we, as a Parliament, must not debate this issue every six months, trying to outbid ourselves with more and more different punishments, more and more different bodies and more and more different headlines, when in fact we know that the truth is that we must intervene with youngsters early, because if we do not, the rest of our talk is rubbish.