Support Our Work Mailing list About / Contact

Surveillance of teenagers extended nationally

01 May 2003

Support our work: become a Friend of Statewatch from as little as £1/€1 per month.

The Youth Justice Board's Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP), which subjects juveniles to intensive supervision with close surveillance, including electronic tagging, is to be extended nationally. ISSP's were introduced in the summer of 2001 and currently cover three quarters of England and Wales with 50 schemes and 119 Youth Offending Teams (YOT). The YOTs programme, which includes police and probation officers, as well as education and health officials, will be extended to provide for another 36 teams in January 2004. Capacity will rise by 700 offenders, to 4,200. According to Home Office minister, Hilary Benn, the ISSP's are "a strong alternative to custodial sentences", but NACRO has recently accused the government of "failing in its own stated policy aim to limit the number of children being sentenced to custody."

In June a joint Commons and Lords committee raised serious questions about the Home Secretary's strategy for cracking down on "unruly youngsters" when it criticised the legality of the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill going through the House of Commons. The committee was particularly critical of plans to increase police powers to disperse "intimidating" groups of youths assembled in specific localities. It said that plans to remove difficult children from dysfunctional homes and place them with foster parents and powers to return children found wandering the street at night risked being incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Liberal Democrat MP, Simon Hughes, said that the report brought some sanity into a debate dominated by authoritarian Labour and Tory MPs.

Nacro website: http://www.nacro.org; CJS online news May 2003; Independent 18.6.03; Select Committee; Simon Hughes website http://www.simonhughes.org.uk

Our work is only possible with your support.
Become a Friend of Statewatch from as little as £1/€1 per month.

 Previous article

Argentinean torturer faces charges after extradition to Spain

Next article 

2 million samples on DNA database

 

Spotted an error? If you've spotted a problem with this page, just click once to let us know.

Report error

Statewatch does not have a corporate view, nor does it seek to create one, the views expressed are those of the author. Statewatch is not responsible for the content of external websites and inclusion of a link does not constitute an endorsement. Registered UK charity number: 1154784. Registered UK company number: 08480724. Registered company name: The Libertarian Research & Education Trust. Registered office: MayDay Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH. © Statewatch ISSN 1756-851X. Personal usage as private individuals "fair dealing" is allowed. We also welcome links to material on our site. Usage by those working for organisations is allowed only if the organisation holds an appropriate licence from the relevant reprographic rights organisation (eg: Copyright Licensing Agency in the UK) with such usage being subject to the terms and conditions of that licence and to local copyright law.

About | Contact | Privacy Policy