Return to the error of old ways

failures.

THE accused stood, flanked by a police officer, as the sheriff passed

sentence of 18 months detention. The solemnity of the moment was broken

by loud sobs from the dock.

As she was being led to the cells beneath the court the accused

stumbled. The policeman picked her up and carried her downstairs as she

wept: ''Oh mummy . . .I want my mummy, please.''

Mary Cairns was eight years old when she stabbed her best friend twice

with a bread knife. She appeared in the dock at Glasgow Sheriff Court a

month after her ninth birthday in September 1973 to face a serious

assault charge. Her cries and wails could be heard for many minutes

after she was carried struggling from the courtroom to begin her

sentence.

They rang much longer in the memory of those who witnessed the

pathetic sight and sound of a small girl being borne from the courtroom

in the arms of a police officer.

And the wave of public revulsion that followed the spectacle provoked

the politicians of the day into a review of the issues surrounding the

case.

In the wake of the outcry, the appeal court later freed Mary Cairns to

return to her tenement home in Barlanark. The custodial sentence was

replaced with a three-year probation order and a condition that she

received psychiatric care. Lord Wheatley was scathing of those who

condemned the sheriff and the law for the scenes. Condemnation of the

courts was misplaced, he said, because the age of criminal

responsibility in Scotland is 8.

He pointed out that Parliament was responsible for the legislation in

1968 which created the children's hearings system but allowed that it

would be appropriate in serious cases to bring a child before the court

rather than a hearing.

A year later, a review completed, the Lord Advocate decreed that in

future no proceedings should start against children under 13 years of

age without explicit Crown Office approval. New guidelines were laid

down on the handling of court proceedings involving children.

The case, 20 years on, is suddenly pertinent for a number of reasons.

Not least because it discloses the emotional see-saws of society's

attitude to children and crime.

It was the belief that courts were the wrong arena in which to deal

with children that led Scotland, uniquely, to set up the children's

hearing system.

Fundamental to it was the approach of looking at the needs of children

who offended, and were offended against, in the context of their family

and the society in which they live.

And the public revulsion engendered by the sight of a child who had

done wrong being dealt with by the full panoply of the criminal justice

system in 1973 spawned reforms.

In the current climate, understandable public revulsion at the murder

of a two-year-old and the arrest of two children for that crime stacks

the weights on the other end of the see-saw. The political response this

time may not be so benign.

Political expediency looks set to result in a crusade which will use

an exceptional crime and children in trouble as its justification.

The Prime Minister set the agenda with his remark last week: ''We

should condemn a little more, understand a little less.'' Don't think,

just act, in other words. Never mind the facts, feel the weight of

public opinion.

The inconvenient fact is that there is no evidence of a new juvenile

crime wave either north or south of the Border.

Edinburgh University criminologist Richard Kinsey wearily points out

that the reverse is the case in Scotland. ''It's all a matter of public

record. The British Crime Survey on Scotland showed that juvenile crimes

of vandalism fell by a quarter. The figures on car crimes remained

almost static. The latest figures from the Lothian and Borders force

show levels of recorded crime falling back to what they were in 1981.''

Home Office figures show that between 1985 and 1991 the number of

under-18 males cautioned or convicted of offences in England and Wales

fell from 219,000 to 149,000. Known offenders under the age of 14 fell

by 43%.

There are, in Scotland, five young people under the age of 16 detained

for murder and one for culpable homicide. The youngest is 12.

Patterns of crime, types of crime, might change and vary from region

to region, but that is a different story.

Inconvenient fact number two is this: Britain already incarcerates

more young people than any other country in Europe, and Scottish jails

top the league.

The clamour for tougher action against the young appears to be

cyclical. Every few years another unusual crime induces a bout of stiff

moralising and a flurry of political initiatives. Another dose of short,

sharp, shocks with a bit of education thrown in appears this time to be

the panacea on offer.

Inconveniently again, the facts disclose the fallacy. The kind of

regime being mooted has already been tried and found not merely to haved

failed to curb youth crime but probably to have escalated it.

Every official study has shown that borstals, approved schools and

''short, sharp shock'' detention camps are worse than useless as weapons

against young people in trouble. Somewhere between 50% and 60% of young

people re-offend after community orders, national figures show. Between

80% and 90% reoffend after imprisonment.

''I think it is appalling that the only reaction politicans can come

up with is to shout for the reintroduction of a regime which did not

work and which even those who worked in it themselves could see did not

work,'' says Jean Freeman, director of Apex, an organisation with a #1m

annual budget which last year dealt with 1900 young offenders, aged

between 15 to 20.

''The evidence that they did not work is that the levels of recidivism

-- the re-offending rate -- did not decline. Our programme, by contrast,

shows a reduction in re-offending. When young people are on our

programmes there is a recidivism rate of 5%. The national average of

re-offending is 62%.''

The politicians are failing to tackle the issues of how to stop young

people being attracted to offending in the first place, Ms Freeman says.

''How do you stop them believing that committing a crime is acceptable?

Simply punishing them does not tackle that attitude. You have to look

wider here than just seeking retribution. You have to look at the

reasons people commit crime and tackle those reasons.''

Young people who are sent to Apex instead of to young offenders

institutions learn very quickly that there is no excuse for offending.

The primary focus of the work is employment, helping people get to the

stage where they can compete for jobs. That involves tackling literacy

problems. It also means tackling their attitudes to authority, to

colleagues and to themselves. Essentially, learning social skills.

By contrast, John X is now a senior figure in the Scottish Prisons

Service. In the eighties he was an enthusiast of the short, sharp shock

regime which was offered at two centres in Scotland -- Friarton in Perth

and Glenochil in Clackmannanshire. He worked at a senior level at one of

those institutions and that experience changed his attitude.

''I was enthused by the notion of the detention centres. The idea was

that if you caught them early in their criminal career you might shock

them so they didn't come back. It was a brutalising regime, pushing

people around. Everything done at the double.''

It was a regime built on bullying. ''In a way you were saying to them,

this is the worst thing that can happen to you. They went out as

graduates, with a badge that said they had been through it and survived.

Nothing that came after could be as bad.

''The other point is that social conditions were so much different 20

years ago. People could go back to families who would support them,

could return to work. That is no longer the case. In those days it was

mainly property offences. Now a lot of young people who offend are

homeless or involved in drugs.''

The history of tough detention centres goes back to 1945 when the

Labour Government wanted to appease the corporal punishment lobby. Until

then young people had been sent to local prisons.

The concept was to be strict with youngsters and the model was

national service, the idea of breaking down people and reshaping them

within a short period. It was based on a set of assumptions that did not

stand up to scrutiny, as John now accepts.

In 1979 the then Labour Government planned to abolish detention

centres and borstals but the General Election intervened. William

Whitelaw's conference speech about a ''short, sharp shock'' for young

criminals which had won him a conference ovation became a reality.

The detention centres began a square-bashing routine of life at the

double and no concessions. They were used for sentences of 28 days up to

4 months.

''But boys were coming back time and again. There was no great

difference between the re-offending rate of those who did detention and

other types of disposal,'' John says.

They were fit when they left, he says; fit enough to run away faster

from the police.

Changes in sentencing policy eroded the original idea and the regime

collapsed in shambles, John recalls: ''What's interesting is the

political involvement throughout. The problem was that the rhetoric

never did square with the reality.''