Are we jailing too many teenagers?

a century we have congratulated ourselves on our far-sighted, liberal approach to childcare. We have taken pride in our children's hearing system and we wonder at the barbarity of the court system still operating south of the Border. We have come to believe that we have always treated children better than other nations.

Not true. We have jailed, transported and executed children with the best of them. We introduced laws to protect property and animals long before we considered protecting our young. We have the lowest age of criminal responsibility in Europe at eight years. We had to be taken screaming and kicking towards a more humane treatment of the young in trouble.

Throughout the twentieth century various legislative efforts were made to remove children from the adult court situation. These met with little success in Scotland until the Kilbrandon Committee was convened in 1962. Here was the first evidence of radicalism and the resultant legislation, the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, introduced a raft of changes which were to prove the envy of the thinking, caring world for the next 20 years.

Welfare rather than punishment. Reform rather than imprisonment. One of the major planks was the creation of children's hearings, where panels of lay people discuss problems and ways forward with the child and family in an informal setting. This system emphasises help to the family in the community, the whole person rather than an isolated problem and a real grasp of the reality of day-to-day life.

Kilbrandon recognised that courts were threatening places and strove to remove children from that setting. Adjudication is separated from disposal. If the child or parents deny the grounds (allegations) they are referred to the Sheriff Court for Proof. If the Sheriff concludes that the grounds are established, the child and family are referred back to a children's hearing for disposal or decisions on appropriate action. Thus, the public's rights are protected.

In 1962, the work of the Juvenile Courts was mainly criminal and 95% of allegations were undisputed. In 1996/97 some 26,000 children were referred to the Reporter to the Children's Panel and formal proceedings were pursued on some 10,500. Of these, 3500 attended court for Proof.

Indications are that the majority of these appeared on welfare, not criminal, grounds. That is, the children were victims of an alleged offence, placed in moral danger, considered beyond parental control or subject to lack of parental care. Most children, then, are not in court for wrongdoing but because they may have been wronged.

Children subject to an alleged offence are often the only witness to that offence. Child sexual abuse is a case in point, where secrecy can conceal the abuse for years. Such children are often called upon as witnesses in the prosecution of the adult. For the child, appearing in court can be a type of abuse and deeply disturbing. This has been recognised by the Government.

''We ask a lot of . . . our child witnesses, and it is therefore vital to reduce any unnecessary distress and anxiety, which is caused simply by being a witness - never mind having to give evidence,'' noted Lord Hardie, Lord Advocate.

Thus, CCTV and screening arrangements are available in courts and new booklets, designed by children, were recently launched by the Crown Office.

While no official statistics of child witnesses are collated, the Crown Office estimates that some 5000 children a year are cited as witnesses, although only a small proportion are called. For some of these children this will be their second time in court giving evidence. They may well have appeared at a Proof in connection with the children's hearing, only to be called again for the criminal prosecution. Given that the alleged culprit is likely to be a parent or carer, the emotional trauma for children cannot be overstated.

The recounting of painful events can be disturbing in itself. The adversarial approach of criminal court can be devastating as the defence lawyer protects his client's rights by challenging the child's integrity, honesty and memory. We have recently had the debate about removing the right of alleged rapists to cross-examine their adult victims, yet we have a system which may require child victims to relive their abuse again and again in court.

Children are also tried and sentenced in court, with 198 found guilty of an offence in 1995. Of these, 48 were sentenced to detention. The same year, 86 children were held on ''unruly certificates'' in an adult prison, awaiting trial for alleged offences. The average remand in prison was 28 days, with 24 children being incarcerated for more than two months. Unruly certificates can apply to children from 14 years of age. Similar to the adult remand criteria, courts will have decided these children cannot be safely placed in the community, on bail or in local authority care. This may be influenced by the severity or the number of offences allegedly committed. The child may be perceived as being a risk to themselves or to others. They may be unable to return to their family home or have no family at all. They may have been arrested while absconding from a local authority residence.

Supported bail hostels, staffed 24 hours per day, have a high success rate. Yet there are only two projects in Scotland - in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Edinburgh unit is run by SACRO and is available to care for young people as an alternative to remand. SACRO believes that every major town should have such a service, but its bail project has been run on a pilot basis since 1991 with no guarantee of long-term funding or prospects of additional funds being made available.

Every year, children are sent to secure accommodation, as 84 were in 1995. Locked institutions managed by local authority or voluntary organisations and run under the auspices of the Scottish Office. Unlike adult prisons, secure accommodation is geared to the developmental needs of children with education, therapy, health monitoring, recreation, family visits and care officers rather than prison wardens. Like adult prisons, they are locked units with extreme limitations on freedom, constant monitoring and lack of privacy. They are also unreal, sheltering the child from the rigours of community life with the challenges of social and sexual situations so necessary in growing up. They deprive the child of his adolescence.

The public may take the view that these children must be serious criminals, presenting a risk to themselves and to others. This is undoubtedly true with some. But with unruly certificates we note that over 33% had allegedly committed acts of dishonesty, not violence; that the children involved have usually been experiencing escalating difficulties over a number of years; that many experienced family difficulties or breakdown from an early age; and that they remain children nevertheless.

Off the record, senior social workers, psychologists and educationalists will acknowledge that our child prisoners suffer from low self-esteem. They see little hope for the future and their own misery in the present. They also recognise trial and imprisonment confirms for these children how we value them and what hope they have - very little indeed.

I just kept listening to the same words over and over. I was just young. It really frustrated me and I hit out.

- Cobain, of a violent disposition, recounting childhood memories of helping agencies

The jail's scary, man. I can see how young laddies commit suicide there.

- Scott, who was held over at 15 to be imprisoned as an adult at 16

Jail's an early learning centre for crime. You have to learn the rules fast to survive, and come out worse.

- Keith, helping others make better choices

Youngsters deserve a chance for life.

- Joe, 17, jailed for four months for Breach of the Peace

From the age of 10 everything went wrong. All our family had a hard life. I just cannae cope with normal things like a job and a house. I get them and I spoil it. Maybe if somebody had helped us earlier . . .

- Richard, now 20

In court you're just a number. Just somebody in a queue. Court never helped any of us.

- All in agreement

The above are some of the reflections of a group of young men who have been through it all as children. They are now working with the staff of the Intensive Probation Project, Edinburgh, as managed by NCH Action for Children, with funding from Edinburgh City Council. They have been in children homes, secure units, assessment centres, on remand, in prison, through countless Children's Hearings and court more often than they can remember. Family breakdown, alcoholism and drug addiction feature in most of their childhood histories. They all agree the Project offers them their first chance to change for which they themselves take responsibility.

They all wish this chance had been given earlier when they were ''kids in trouble''. You listen to this comment and look around the room at their young faces and cannot fail to feel sadness and then a quiet comment from the corner: ''When you're locked up you lose your childhood. I've grown up before my time.''

Upstairs the project works with a younger group, 14 and 15 year olds, whose stories will sound remarkably similar. The project is called Hope Street. Using the same approach, NCH demonstrates success in helping these teenagers to move away from trouble. Children who live in a world where the odds are stacked against them can make choices for a better life, but only if the right support is provided to the right people at the right time. The first thing we must do is listen to our children.

''Young people are the experts in the problems of young people,'' says Keith, who, after a short lifetime of trouble, is now helping others to help themselves.

The right services at the right time would break the cycle of despair many of our children face. The ultimate irony is that we know what to do, we know what works - we are simply failing to deliver.

NCH Action for Children and Barnardo's are two organisations pioneering such work. Both work effectively with teenagers caught in a cycle of persistent offending - those young people reckoned to be at greatest risk of incarceration and graduating to a life of adult crime. Both lean heavily on techniques developed in work with young adult offenders as an alternative to prison.

Such a project run by NCH in Greenock was independently assessed by Stirling University. The University reports a success rate over 30% and the courts reflect a sharp downward trend of imprisonment of young people. This in Greenock, where only a few years ago the rate of imprisoning young adults was higher than in Turkey. These are young adults of 16 years rather than children of 15 years. How much difference is there?

''What I cannae understand, man, is that one day you're a child and the very next you're an adult. Same problems, same life, same me. I hadnae changed,' reflects Cobain on his arrest on his 16th birthday, subsequent imprisonment and months spent in solitary confinement - all before he was 17.

The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 was an opportunity to alter our treatment of young people. The Act emphasises the welfare of children and their right to be involved in decisions about their future. This is producing changes in divorce actions, child protection and other factors. What about young people in trouble?

'The welfare principle has not been applied to children who break the law, yet these are the children who face the harshest life experiences, who are most in need,'' says Margo Clark, of the Intensive Probation Project, Edinburgh (NCH Action for Children).

The Association of Directors of Social Work (ADSW) believes that there is little difference between 14 and 17 year olds, and that every effort should be made to keep young people out of courts and the prisons for as long as possible.

Social Work into the Millennium, a paper produced by ADSW, notes: ''While many young offenders require to be dealt with in the court system, many immature or vulnerable young people would be more effectively dealt with by a supervision requirement. Within the European context the age of 16 is relatively young for the full sanction of the law to operate.''

ADSW calls for the children's cearing system to deal with more young people up to 17 and asks for identified resources to provide the services that work.

Every year in Scotland we spend over #1000m on criminal custice, yet only 3% is expended on social work and community services. A year in secure accommodation costs #83,200. A year in prison costs #25,600. An intensive community project costs #2400 per person and has a greater likelihood of success.

The prospects of increased funding to these effective options is very poor indeed. We are tied in to a Government strategy of providing more prison places, as signalled by the opening of Scotland's first private prison in Kilmarnock. Prison and secure accommodation are costly options. Services tend to become resource-led - we can only use what is available. The more prisons we build or keep open, the more likely we are to fill them with our most vulnerable young people.

Scott sums up his views of secure accommodation, remand and prison: ''Everyone does a different jail. No-one has the same time. It just doesn't work.''

l Next week: prison - the stark reality

l Reg McKay is a former director of Social Work for Argyll and Bute and of NCH Action for Children