Ministers unveil youth crime strategy

Ministers have unveiled a £100m package aimed at cutting youth crime.

Among the proposals, which have been heavily trailed in recent days as the government outlined its response to knife crime, is a plan to allow courts to name and shame more children.

The youth action plan, published on Tuesday, said judges would be asked to consider widening the number of cases in which 16 and 17-year-old offenders could be publically named.

At present the press is prevented from publishing the identity of criminals under 18 except in exceptional cases.

The package also features two schemes allowing young criminals to avoid prosecution, including a new 'youth conditional caution' for relatively low-level offences.

Ministers are also to consider expanding a scheme which sees children involved in low-level crime avoid prosecution if they meet their victim and apologise.

Other proposals include:

 • Targeting the families of up to 20,000 children seen to be at risk of becoming prolific offenders
 • Families of unruly teenagers threatened with eviction from council houses
 • Making more child criminals carry out unpaid work in the community on Friday and Saturday nights
 • Giving citizens' panels a say in the work young criminals should be forced to carry out
 • Opening youth centres late in the evenings and at weekends
 • Adding parenting orders to more Asbos, which obliges parents to become involved in their child's behaviour
 • Expanding a scheme which sees police remove lone children from the streets at night
 • Increasing police after-school patrols

Home secretary Jacqui Smith said: "Increasingly we are able to identify these young people early and intervene to address the root cases of their behaviour, including supporting and challenging their parents in meeting their responsibilities.

"But I want to call on parents to play their part. Tough enforcement and policing is only one part of the solution."

'U-turn'

Plans to crackdown on knife crime were mired in confusion on Monday, when Smith denied suggesting that offenders could be taken to see their victims in A&E.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats both claimed she had been forced into a U-turn after strong criticism from doctors and victims' groups.

But Smith insisted she had been talking about sending young people caught in possession of a knife into hospitals to talk to health professionals about the impact of a knife wound.

"What I didn't say was that we should traipse loads of knife-wielding thugs through wards while people are being treated," she said.

The package was dismissed by the Conservatives as a mixture of "recycled announcements and lazy gimmicks".

At justice questions in the Commons, shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert said the government was still "cobbling" the plan together yesterday.

"People don't want more last-minute government action plans, they want action," he said.

Justice secretary Jack Straw said the public understood that Labour was the first government since the war to see a reduction in crime.