The Fear Factory: Jack Straw playing the law and order ‘arms race’

Press Release: 30 June 2010

The Fear Factory Coalition welcomes Ken Clarke’s proposals today made in a speech to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, echoing the views of The Fear Factory documentary which exposed ‘the tough talk fallacy that has led to the current crisis in the criminal justice system’ and revealed how crime and the fear of crime have been used by politicians contrary to the public interest for the last 30 years.

However, we are appalled by Jack Straw’s subsequent backlash in The Daily Mail which flies in the face of evidence. With a prison population of over 84,000 and a reoffending rate of 60% - rising to almost 95% for young males, his arguments that prison does work are nothing but fear mongering and an attempt to ratchet up the law and order ‘arms race’ for his own political ends.

The Fear Factory documentary includes contributions from Erwin James (ex-offender and Guardian columnist), Joyce Moseley (Director, Catch 22), Juliet Lyon (Director, Prison Reform Trust), David Howarth (ex Shadow Sec of State for Justice, Lib Dems), Dominic Grieve (ex Shadow Sec of State for Justice, Conservatives and now Attorney General), Maria Eagle (ex Minister for Justice, Labour), Chris Roycroft Davis (Ex Deputy Editor of the Sun), Paul Cavadino (ex Director of NACRO), Barry and Margaret Mizzen, Professor Rod Morgan (ex Head of the YJB) and Martin Narey (ex DG of the Prison Service and Director of Barnardo’s). The Fear Factory Coalition, inspired by the film has 57 member organisations. The consensus is clear: tough measures are not the same as effective measures, a point that Jack Straw deliberately seems to be missing.

--ENDS

Notes:
• For further information and a list of coalition members contact Rachel Bird at rachel@spiritlevelfilm.com / 020 7569 3039; or visit www.thefearfactory.co.uk.
• Excerpts and trailers can be found online, or we can provide a full copy on request.
• We have a comprehensive list of high profile speakers who would be willing to provide and interview or comment.
• Attached is a key list of quotes on the film, quotes from the film can be found online: www.thefearfactory.co.uk/about.php. Please feel free to use them but we politely ask you credit the film and where appropriate, link to this site.
• The Fear Factory film and Coalition have been generously funded by The Nationwide Foundation: www.nationwidefoundation.org.uk.

Prison numbers in England and Wales hits record high

There are currently 85,076 inmates in England and

The prison population in England and Wales has reached a record high of 85,201, it has emerged.

Ministry of Justice figures show this figure was 192 more than last Friday.

Campaigners have called for Justice Secretary Ken Clarke to freeze the building of new prisons and stop the number of inmates rising further.

In February Jack Straw, the then justice secretary, announced the end of an early release scheme which saw more than 80,000 offenders let out.

No prisoners were eligible for the End of Custody Licence (ECL) scheme after 12 March and the last remaining ECL prisoners were out on 9 April.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8697456.stm

Coalition can break from failed justice policy

Abandoning the obsessive concentration on increasing prison capacity will allow the government to restructure justice system

What strikes you most about the new justice policy outlined in the coalition programme for government is the absence of rhetoric. The new watchwords are moderation, common sense and effectiveness. As an example: everyone knows that drugs and drink fuel crime and antisocial behaviour – so let's deal with addictions and binge-drinking in a way that reduces harm and cuts costs. The coalition government appears to be taking the opportunity to break with the failed legacy of vacuous prison-building and instead concentrate on what works in justice policy.

When the new justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, was last in charge of prisons and penal policy, as home secretary, the average prison population in England and Wales (1992–1993) was 44,628. That figure now stands at over 85,000 – a number Clarke described after his appointment as "extraordinarily high". The political arms race over the criminal justice policy indulged in by successive Conservative and Labour administrations over the past two decades has seen the UK prison population grow from average to the highest in western Europe. As outlined in the Prison Reform Trust briefing launched this week, the social and economic costs of our addiction to custody have been immense.

In the current climate it would be a form of economic madness to allow the prison population to continue to spiral out of control. Each new prison place costs £170,000 to build and maintain, and the cost per prisoner per year is £45,000. Total prison expenditure increased from £2.843bn in 1995 to £4.325bn in 2006. Despite its exorbitant cost, prison has a poor record for reducing reoffending – 49% of adults are reconvicted within one year of being released, and for those serving sentences of less than 12 months this increases to 61%. The National Audit Office estimates that reoffending by all recent ex-prisoners costs the taxpayer between £9.5bn and £13bn a year.

The coalition can draw on lessons from abroad where justice reinvestment and prisoner re-entry programmes, driven by economic necessity in many states in America, have had considerable success at reducing crime and rates of reoffending. Closer to home, restorative justice with young people in Northern Ireland has delivered a reduction in youth crime, a drop in child custody and a 90% victim satisfaction rate. Integrated offender management schemes piloted in parts of England and Wales have achieved impressive results and are waiting to be rolled out nationally.

A breathing space from obsessive concentration on increasing prison capacity at all costs would give the government time to restructure the system so that local authorities, voluntary organisations, and police and probation services work more closely together to develop community solutions to crime that inspire public and judicial confidence.

A moratorium – a proposal welcomed by the Ministry of Justice as "timely and interesting" – would also allow time for the coalition partners to capitalise on the considerable areas of agreement between them on justice policy and, where there are differences, resolve them in a rational manner. In the Liberal Democrat and Conservative election manifestos there was broad consensus on investing in getting children out of trouble and nipping youth crime in the bud, diverting addicts and people who are mentally ill into effective treatment and, at the other end of the spectrum, informing and supporting victims, transforming prisoner rehabilitation and cutting reoffending on release.

The new justice policy fuses these plans and, although moderate in tone, could deliver the prize of increasing public safety while at the same time reducing the cost burden imposed by excessive use of custody.

A review of sentencing could be useful. The glut of legislation, raft of new offences and mandatory penalties and overall growth in the punishment industry all need unpicking. New ministers will need to examine the explosion in indeterminate sentencing – which has increased from 3,000 indeterminate sentences in 1992 to 12,822 in March 2010. The freedom bill will be an opportunity to review the civil-liberty crushing IPP sentence, which has led to thousands of people being held in jail long after their tariff has expired. It will be important, too, to look at the high number of recalls for breach of license and any unnecessary use of custodial remand.

As Alan Travis highlights in the Guardian, in the past the new justice secretary has been highly critical of the unchecked expansion of the prison population. In a debate on prison policy in the House of Commons in June 2007, Clarke called for "a change of culture in which the platitudes about community sentences and making prison only for those who need it are turned into reality by returning proper discretion to the courts and ensuring that prisons are used only for violent, dangerous and recidivist criminals in conditions in which there is some hope that some of them will be rehabilitated". As a moderate prescription for reforming our overcrowded and underperforming prison system the new coalition government could do a lot worse.

Juliet Lyons, Prison Reform Trust
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/21/coalition-can-break-from-failed-justice-policy

The Fear Factory: Law and Order – When will the cracks start to show?

Press Release: 12 May 2010
The Fear Factory: Law and Order – When will the cracks start to show?

As the dust begins to settle on a strange new political landscape, the release of the initial coalition agreement between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives makes no mention of the clear differences in law and order policy between the two parties. The former were clear in their manifesto:
· a presumption against short sentences of less than six months;
· the cancellation of the prison building programme;
· a more effective justice policy.

Two out of three of these policies run totally counter to the Conservatives policy and the Fear Factory Coalition calls on the government to clearly outline their plans for law and order. As Kenneth Clarke assumes the mantel of Minister for Justice we ask that he works with the Liberal Democrats for an effective long-term criminal justice policy. We also call on the Liberal Democrats to have the courage of their convictions and to stand fast to their election promises.

In the election debate Nick Clegg echoed his response to The Fear Factory film which inspired the Coalition:
“I hope the Fear Factory exposes the tough talk fallacy that has led to the current crisis in the criminal justice system. Dragging young people through the criminal justice system for minor offences is a foolproof way of helping them to graduate to a more serious life of crime.”

Chris Huhne, then Home Affairs Spokesperson, was categorical in his agreement with The Fear Factory which he said: “Exposes our criminal justice crises with precision.” He promised that: “The Liberal Democrats will not peddle the politics of fear ... We will put criminal justice on an evidence-based footing by establishing a National Crime Reduction Agency to test properly what cuts crime.”

Dominic Grieve speaking in the film as Shadow Justice Secretary was equally clear in the lead up to the election that:
“What I do want to do is to try and do some hard thinking about what works. To put in place systems which I hope will reduce crime in both short, medium and long term and implement them along the lines of what we've been discussing and I want to do that whilst at the time saying to the public that there are no quick fixes and any politician that goes out there and promises a quick fix is in fact deceiving people.”

Despite the embarrassing wrangling over the crime stats which led to a warning from Sir Michael Scholar, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, that the Conservatives were ‘likely to mislead the public’, for once this was an election where there wasn’t too much ‘out toughing’ on crime.

With the media already putting pressure on the coalition government to make crime an issue it remains unclear as to whether ‘the fear factory’ will continue to rumble on unabated or finally be deemed ineffective, but whatever the outcome the growing Fear Factory Coalition - currently 55 members strong - will continue to campaign for an effective long-term criminal justice policy.

--ENDS--

Film exposes horrors of 'fear factory'

The Fear Factory has been screened at the MOJ, home office, DCSF, the Welsh assembly, and has been praised by politicians who have seen it. ePolitix.com speaks to the film-makers, Richard Symons and Joanna Natasegara.

For people who have never seen The Fear Factory, can you briefly explain the idea behind it?

RS

Essentially, the film explains why our criminal justice system is in crisis and attempts to correct the numerous misconceptions held by politicians, media and public. There has been a raft of reports and recommendations over the last few years, but no-one's ever taken a holistic view of the issues – in particular, the media's influence on policy-making – and perhaps the very heart of the matter, what do we actually want from our criminal justice system? It is interesting to see that the most recent report from the justice select committee came to exactly the same conclusion as the film on the key indicator of performance – re-offending rates. And at the moment, we are performing pretty badly.

Spirit Level makes a wide variety of films, why did you decide to investigate the nature of the criminal justice system?

RS

The problem with criminal justice issues is they are either very dry (and often contested) statistical data, or highly emotive individual cases. Neither of these are particularly useful for delivering compelling arguments to influence policy or educate people.

We were approached by a group of stakeholders who had seen our previous political documentary, The Ministry of Truth, and felt we had brought a very dry constitutional issue (Parliament's self-regulation) to life by trying to get MPs and ministers to support a bill making them legally accountable for deliberately misleading the public. It ended up being the BBC's highest-rated political documentary of that year. The stakeholders could certainly have gone a more traditional route and commissioned a report, but felt a film would give them a more usable tool – one they could show to policymakers as well as other stakeholders and perhaps most importantly, the public.

Ultimately I think we were drawn to the idea because it deals with issues as fundamental (and emotionally charged) as redemption and retribution. Do we want offenders to be rehabilitated and redeemed, or would we prefer to pay the price for their continued re-offending and incarceration? The focus on youth justice made the subject even more compelling – if you are an innocent at birth, where is the cut-off point? When can society say we no longer have a responsibility to set you on the straight and narrow? 16, 18, 35? Can you ever turn your back? That is as much of a moral as an economic question, and makes powerful viewing.

JN

There is often a lot of hypocrisy in the media when dealing with children as victims and offenders – the two are not mutually exclusive groups; more often than not they are actually closely linked. A child who has had a rough ride in some way and is a victim is more likely to be the offender of the future, yet the media loves to talk in absolutes – angels or demons.

You must have experienced mixed reactions to the film, but are most people surprised to hear that crime has actually fallen since 1997?

RS

Absolutely. I do not think we have ever made a film where the public had such strong but misinformed opinions. Having said that, we also found the main problem with public opinion was that no-one had ever talked the issues through. Start a conversation with, "What should the sentence be for murder?" and inevitably the response is, "Life. And 'life' should mean exactly that." It is only once you get a little further into it – the costs, rehabilitation etc. that people start to think it through and put the initial, emotional response to one side. We deliberately provoked an emotional response (and engagement) to begin with by introducing the viewer to some violent offenders, where your initial reaction is to hope they are not on the streets. Then we unpack the arguments and history. By the end of it you have met all the relevant players (victims, media, politicians, government, judges, NGOs), fully considered the issue and – hopefully – changed your mind.

JN

The public response on crime is quite like the public response to politicians – they can think their local area and local MP is okay, but that the rest of the country has gone to the dogs. It is an odd psychological paradox.

The shadow Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Grieve, appeared in the film claiming that crime has definitely increased since 1997, which was proven to be factually wrong. Has he tried to retract this statement at any point?

RS

I am afraid not. Perhaps worse than that, we held the launch screening at the Empire, Leicester Square, with a Q&A session afterwards. The Conservatives pulled Dominic from the panel and were not able to offer a replacement – it looked pretty bad in front of 500 or so press, stakeholders, civil servants and government officials.

JN

The Conservatives have been consistent in their repetition of this fact, despite warnings from Michael Scholar [chairman of the UK Statistics Authority]. Their persistence with it indicates they have a particular agenda they are trying to put across to the public, and that to me is fear-mongering; using people's imaginations to frighten them into voting a certain way. It is not very helpful and it is a shame, because lots of the work done by Dominic Grieve and Iain Duncan Smith on youth justice has been quite positive.

In the film, Cherie Blair, chair of the English Commission on Prisons, says that prisons have a success rate of around 30 per cent (or a re-offending rate of 70 per cent). When setting out to make the film, did you think that it was this low?

RS

Frankly, before we made the film I had never even thought about re-offending rates, but very early on in the research, it became clear this was the key. I do not think I was surprised by how bad it was, I was more surprised that no-one had got a handle on this earlier. Here the media are as much to blame as politicians – had the press been attacking policy failures on re-offending rates, there is no question in my mind the parties and politicians would have responded. Instead we are stuck with a slanging match between 'soft' or 'tough' on crime – the word 'effective' is not in the vocabulary.

JN

I was surprised at the highest rate of reoffending for young men (90 per cent), because I could not understand why such a clear failure of purpose was not a national outrage, and why, if we know the system is so ineffective, we're committing millions of pounds to expanding it. The simple truth is we cannot afford to build more prisons or have more people become offenders or re-offenders. It costs a lot of money to fail this badly! But the papers clearly did not feel reoffending rates was a story, nor would many of them tolerate, be sympathetic, to spending money on more effective alternatives to custody.

Chris Roycroft-Davis, former executive editor of The Sun newspaper, says in the film he does not think newspapers have a duty to "educate, or inform". Were you at all shocked by this?

RS

Not at all – though this was almost certainly the biggest bone of contention at Spirit Level. There was a natural instinct to crucify Chris, but I was impressed by his honesty, and thought we would be kidding ourselves if we believed such a duty existed. Honesty will become a 'duty' only if the public stops buying a newspaper when it lies.

All credit to Chris though – he was prepared to defend himself at the Q&A session and was quite frank about the film changing his mind. Does that redeem a man who has been responsible for 20 years of headlines read by 10 million people a day? Things get harder to justify when you look at the principles/ethics of journalism laid out by the NUJ code for its members. I suspect if they ever tried to enforce them, there would be a significantly reduced membership.

JN

Initially I was both shocked and angered by Chris' statement – I had always believed (perhaps naively) that papers did profess to educate and lead. I felt, and to some extent still do think, that the newspapers' consumers are not thinking about the shareholders' bottom line when they read the stories. Nor do I think this statement fits well with a paper that is actively trying to have an effect on policy, and often succeeding. I actually think The Sun's campaigns on the Bulger case led the Labour Party, and was partially responsible for the rise in young people in custody since 1998. However, like Richard, I did enjoy Chris' honesty and openness. He has subsequently been a great asset and supporter of the project overall.

Did you find when making the film that politicians privately believe there is another option other than imprisoning the young, but publicly, crime-fighting rhetoric is what scores the most political points?

RS

In terms of youth justice, you are absolutely right. But rhetoric is one thing, and delivery another. Talk is cheap, legislation a little more expensive – but not that much more. The real deal is implementation, and that is where I suspect the differences kick in. Whether it is through a lack of interest, ability or funding, we will probably never know, but this government has been better at delivering its promises on building prisons than it has at delivering effective alternative options. In the film, even John Fassenfelt – deputy chair of the Magistrates' Association – was pretty damning of what has been delivered. When you ask the NGOs and offenders their opinion, the criticism was at another level altogether.

JN

We have always thought the public prefer politicians to tell more of the straight truth and explain the complicated bits. Very few other countries have such a problem with explaining sensible youth justice policies to the electorate, so I am convinced this is not an intractable problem. However, we could solve it much faster if the parties agreed not to point-score off each other on crime, not to use fear as an election tool or bandwagon on essentially anomalous, high-profile cases which are not indicative of a general pattern.

Do you think the backlash from the media is the only thing stopping politicians from a different approach to criminal justice, and youth justice in particular?

RS

As we point out in the film, the media are not elected to run the country. I think the real hindrance to reform is the politician's inability to lead on the issue. That has lost them the respect of a great many stakeholders they need to work with. Off the back of the film, a coalition of unprecedented expertise and experience was formed (some 47 NGOs) to lobby politicians for effective, as opposed to 'media-friendly' policies. If a dyed–in-the-wool newspaper man like Chris Roycroft-Davis had his opinion changed by the film, it seems beyond credibility that our elected representatives and government could not do the same thing over the last decade. I see that as a failing on their part and in particular, a failing in their capacity as representatives of the peoples' interests.

JN

I think politicians have got themselves stuck between each other and the media. Even if the press did not respond to an effective policy statement with a 'soft' headline, the opposing party might well do. This 'arms race' has got to stop before sensible, productive debate and outcomes can happen – though I note the Liberal Democrat manifesto promises on law and order are very similar to the conclusions of the film. Maybe it has been easier for them to be sensible on policy because they were not being so closely watched?

The film has already had an incredible impact, but do you think the best way of instigating change is for it to be aired on television?

RS

Not necessarily. We have had a tremendous amount of both 'official' and 'unofficial' screenings for government, the Home Office, MOJ, DCSF, NGOs and, earlier this week, the Welsh Assembly. That is a lot of policymakers. As a film-maker you always want your film to be seen by as large an audience as possible, but this was made with a very specific purpose in mind – to influence policy-change. As such, it was essential to make a balanced but compelling argument on a difficult, emotive subject with a counter-intuitive conclusion. If this film had been through the broadcast commissioning process, it would have become something very different. Broadcasters do not have the same stranglehold on reaching the public as they used to – the internet has changed the ground rules. That said, I have no doubt at some point we will make an edit for a broadcaster.

A coalition has been formed on the back of the film; what stage is this at and what are you hoping to achieve from it?

JN

The Nationwide Foundation went 'above and beyond' in supporting the resultant coalition, and we are delighted they have decided to continue funding its work for this year. There is a co-ordinator in place who will continue to work with coalition members on the goals they have set out.

RS

One of the ideas is to pool the coalition's expertise and use it to rebuff misleading media, statistics and politicians, by reproducing an article or policy statement online and having a group of experts post comments on it. You will effectively have an evidence-based response from credible individuals that can be used as a resource by media, politicians, stakeholders etc. to put forward an expert opinion.

http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/justice-incarceration-or-rehabilitation/

The Fear Factory – the work continues

All may have gone quiet on the blog but we’ve been very busy behind the scenes. On the strength of the film, almost 50 national organisations joining the coalition, fantastic press and unprecedented support from key stakeholders, the Nationwide Foundation have very kindly agreed to fund the future work of The Fear Factory as we campaign for:

A cross-party commitment to creating and implementing an effective, long term Criminal Justice strategy based on evidence.

An "Amnesty" on the "arms race" - ending policies driven by short-term political gain, media sensationalism and "tough-talk".

Britain has one of the highest incarceration rates in Western Europe and though supposedly only used as a last resort and to house those most dangerous offenders, the UK incarcerates more children than most other western countries – currently over 2,500 children are in jail.

As the media decries the youth of today and the spectre of ‘broken Britain’ raises it’s ugly head, politicians knee-jerk to each story of violent youth, conveniently ignoring that at the heart of the issue are some of the most vulnerable children and young people who have been failed by social services and failed by us.

Conditions in custody are regularly criticised by independent inspectors, including the over-use of physical force and deliberate infliction of pain, strip-searching and segregation. The majority of young people are criminalised for minor and petty offences, but set on the trajectory to crime by the system itself. Growing up under these conditions it is no surprise that the re-offending rate is well over 75%. The system isn’t working, and at £170,000 for each new prison place it is a very expensive way of ensuring our young people become more damaged thereby opening society up to a very real risk of crime.

30% of children in custody have been in care, three quarters of the prison population suffer from at least two diagnosable mental health disorders and learning disabilities and difficulties are rife. In 1910 the then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill said that the civilisation of a society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners. When those prisoners are our children and prison takes the place of a failing social services, it is imperative that society takes a serious look at the legacy we are building before it’s too late and Britain ‘grows’ the largest adult prison population in Europe.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, the DVD is available for purchase at: http://www.spiritlevelfilm.com/the-fear-factory.html/

We also have a public screening at The Frontline Club on 22nd April at the Frontline Club: http://frontlineclub.com/events/2010/04/uk-premiere-screening---fear-factor.html.

Two screenings as part of the London Independent Film festival on the 18th and 19th April, tickets available here: http://www.londonindependent.org/tickets.htm.

I’ll bring you more news soon but in the meantime, check out the New Statesman for news on The Tories’ shocking new crime leaflet - evidence of business as usual for the Fear Factory:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/04/crime-leaflet-tories.

Tainted by the James Bulger legacy

Why does the horrific murder of a Merseyside toddler by two young boys in 1993 still have such a lasting effect on the way we demonise and stereotype disturbed children?

Nasty little juveniles. Hooligans. Freaks. Bastards. Worthless. Evil. Those are just a few of the words used by our politicians and media to describe some of the country's children. It could be now, but this was in 1993, the year that two-year-old James Bulger was murdered on Merseyside by two 10-year-old boys.

I grew up with what headlines described as "hooligans on holiday". In 1985, my parents set up Bryn Melyn, a home in north Wales to look after some of the most disturbed teenagers in the country. They included children who'd slice themselves open to push paper clips underneath their own skin; a girl who inserted shards of a smashed lightbulb inside her vagina; a boy whose guardians – his grandparents – would hold his hands in the fire to punish him; and a pubescent girl whose parents would drag her out of bed when they got back from the pub so their friends could have sex with her.

The "holiday" bit referred to the intensive one-to-one trips abroad my dad designed to kick-start their rehabilitation. These trips were incredibly successful. Before we sent the first boy away, he had regularly assaulted the staff and other teenagers. After returning from a three-month trip to France, he went to work with Alzheimer's patients. A short spell in prison – this boy's only other option – has a failure rate for young men of about 90%.

As part of my research for a book I am writing about Bryn Melyn, I've studied the newspaper coverage of 1993 to trace the path between the horrific Bulger murder and the way we view young people today.

When the death of James hit the papers, the Daily Star offered a £20,000 reward "to trap beasts who killed little James". The Guardian reported a "lynch mob" outside the home of a wrongly arrested 12-year-old suspect. In the Sun, Richard Littlejohn screeched: "This is no time for calm. It is a time for rage, for blood-boiling anger, for furious venting of spleen." Headlines such as "Evil that makes a child kill", "Locked up in luxury", "Riot mob fears at Jamie court" dominated the newspapers.

It was also the perfect opportunity for the Tories to reassert themselves as the party of law and order. Three days after James's body was found, the then prime minister, John Major, gave an interview to the Mail on Sunday, highlighting his tough stance on crime. He said: "Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less." Five days later, his home secretary, Kenneth Clarke, announced plans to incarcerate children as young as 12. When it came to the two boys charged with the Bulger murder, the policeman in charge of the case, Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby, asked us "to remember that they are 10 years of age". But the law didn't. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were tried as adults.

"How do you feel now, you little bastards?" asked the Daily Star's front page on the day of the sentence. "Evil, brutal and cunning," said the Mail. The Mirror went for "Freaks of nature".

Despite the sensationalist, fear-mongering coverage of the Bulger case, my father was still taken by surprise when he first went on television to talk about his work. "When the producers of Eamonn Holmes's chat show invited me along to 'put across my side of the story', I naively believed them," he says. "I walked into the studios just before the programme went live. As it did, a huge 'Hooligans on Holiday' banner unrolled behind me. Then three women in the audience stood up with pictures of their dead children, who'd been killed by joyriders. Our kids had never killed anyone, and many hadn't even offended, but the producers were quite happy to confuse joyriders, murderers, young offenders and children in care.

"Throughout the negative press attention, social services knew the trips worked, and continued to place children with us. But the kids themselves were very upset and angry. They felt they were being verbally abused by the whole country."

In response to a Sun campaign, Michael Howard, who had become home secretary, (illegally) extended the sentences imposed on Venables and Thompson from 10 years to 15 years. And in response to the media furore surrounding Bryn Melyn, Howard also banned therapeutic trips abroad for children in care.

Recent media attention has turned to Edlington, South Yorkshire, where two brothers, aged 10 and 11, brutally burnt, stabbed and sexually assaulted two boys, aged nine and 11. This incident has the same ingredients as the Bulger case: the horrific attack, the disastrous parenting, the boys' escalating violence, and the failure of the relevant authorities to do anything about it.

It is a simple cause and effect; incidents like these don't just happen. But instead of tackling this problem rationally, we defer to hysteria and hollow accusations that solve nothing and protect no one.

These days, we have Facebook pages and YouTube video montages dedicated to James Bulger, created by people who, apparently, never even met him. Nobody will say that these are mawkish, sentimental and ultimately extremely damaging in their creation of monstrous, unsubstantiated fears about young people. Nobody will say to Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger, that it has got nothing to do with her swhen she demands that the Edlington boys be named. Nobody seems bothered that the media has casually dubbed the Edlington boys the "devil brothers" or "hell boys".

But amid this fresh wave of moral panic, there is a glint of optimism. A new documentary by Spirit Level Films, The Fear Factory, was launched in London on Monday, and attempts to untangle the perceptions we have about our "dangerous" young people. Increasingly frustrated with the perpetuation of stereotypes and the way young people are treated in care, the criminal justice system, and even schools, three organisations – Safer Wales Ltd, Construction Youth Trust and Addaction – commissioned the film, which includes interviews with politicians, heads of charities and teenagers. "We want the film to be a wake-up call to politicians, colleagues who work in this field, and to the media," says Barbara Natasegara, chief executive of Safer Wales.

A failure to intervene with a holistic approach early in the lives of young people at risk of offending has had stark consequences. We spend 11 times more on locking children up than on preventing youth crime. About 75% of young people leaving custody will reoffend, and 27% of adult prisoners have been in care. Reoffending by these former children in care costs about £3bn a year.

As a result of The Fear Factory, more than 40 charities have now formed a coalition to lobby the government to put a stop to our relentless demonisation of young people.

Seventeen years on, it still sickens me to remember the parents of the children in Bryn Melyn who gave newspaper interviews complaining that the way my father was treating their children was a waste of time, that what he was doing was wrong.

Helen McNutt
The Guardian
Wednesday 3 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/03/james-bulger-legacy-disturbed-children

The Place2Be: the case for early intervention

Most juvenile crime is committed in mid adolescence. Much of it is petty and needs no more than a firm caution and plenty of educational, work and recreational opportunities. A relatively small but significant proportion commit more serious crimes. There are various reasons for this but, regardless of socio-economic conditions, most are struggling with emotions that they can’t cope with. They are in varying degrees very angry, scared, lonely or wary, usually for good reason, and without help or understanding, they turn to crime as some form of release or expression.

The Place2Be recognises that these teenagers were young children but only a few years before – and that most of their emotional problems were brewing in childhood well before they got involved in crime. And so we believe that it makes sense to make contact with them early and offer support before things build up out of proportion.

The Place 2Be is basically an early intervention service and we know that we can prevent some children from entering the youth justice system at a later stage.

It is a voluntary organisation that has developed during the last 15 years a highly valued and respected school based counselling service in 17 regions across England, Scotland and Wales. We work in 155 schools, mostly primary. We support teachers and parents; we offer a self referral service for all children in the schools (approx 50000 children) and we provide individual and group counselling to those children who particularly need it.

Children, by and large as a result of our intervention, are in a better position to learn and access their education; parents feel more confident in handling their children; teachers feel better supported in understanding and responding to the children in their classrooms. We are encouraged by the many positive comments of head teachers who are quite clear that we make a big difference to the overall well being of the whole school and to the mental health of the children.

We very much want to be part of the coalition to call for the depoliticisation of young people and for more preventative and humane ways of addressing the problems in youth crime.

Peter Wilson
Clinical Adviser
The Place2Be

Why did we commission “the Fear Factory”?

With funding from The Nationwide Foundation, three Third Sector agencies came together to commission this film, Safer Wales Ltd, Construction Youth Trust and Addaction. We all work intensively with young people who are either offenders or at risk of offending, to break the cycles of vulnerabilities, and prevent re-offending.

Frustration with External Factors
We have become, over the past 15 years or so, increasingly frustrated with the external factors which work against us and the young people themselves. In particular with how they are viewed, and treated, both within the criminal justice system, and also to some extent in schools, or in the care system, and in particular by the media, which we feel has a lot to answer for in perpetuating stereotypes and demonising young people, lessening their chances of exiting from the dire circumstances some of them find themselves in.

Wake Up Call – we need a Cross-Party Solution
We want the film, to be a wake-up call – to politicians, colleagues in the Third, Public and Private sectors who work in this field, and to the media. We want to ask you to join this coalition to develop and commit to a realistic and practical way forward on youth justice; and reject a system in which young people and crime are used as pawns to sell papers or to attract votes.

We want all of our politicians to work on a cross-party solution, and deal with the issue with proper long term planning, policy and delivery, and evaluation over a longer period.

Young people are entering the criminal justice system at younger and younger ages. We need to be asking the question why? Where are we failing them so badly that no one seems to be picking up the signs early enough to prevent this?

“Somewhere to go and something to do”
Consultation with young people who are “hanging around” on the streets, consistently shows the same result. They want somewhere to go, and something to do. It’s not rocket science. Too often, the same level of short-sightedness results in money being spent on practical measures that can end up alienating the young people even more – costly resources such as CCTV cameras and alley-gating schemes, please the electorate and meet short term community safety targets, whilst longer term or more creative solutions like more detached youth services and facilities, or, for example, the community (weekend, evening and school holiday) use of schools, are often talked about, but not delivered.

“All I wanted was an adult to talk to......................”
Many agencies in the Third Sector, including Safer Wales, find themselves delivering programmes to prevent “re-offending”, and we know that mentoring or other support schemes, and other interventions – if they are engaged with on a voluntary basis and occur at the right time – can make a huge difference to offending or reoffending behaviour. But the question we should be asking ourselves is why do these schemes need to exist? – Why are these young people getting into offending behaviour in the first place? – How is it that we have not effectively tackled and managed risk factors and vulnerabilities evidenced over 10 years ago - what have we really done to tackle poor literacy, poor parenting, low educational achievement, mental health issues, child abuse and plain old poverty?

Short-termist thinking doesn’t work...
The answer is that much has been done – but most of it in short term bursts, measured over 2 – 3 years. Partly this is because much new work is done with grant funding, which has a shelf life of 3 years at best. Partly, it is to do with performance reporting within agencies and with grant funders; targets (again annual or 2 – 3 year at most, coinciding with the electoral cycles), often related to what both local and national politicians want to demonstrate they have done on crime and disorder, to the electorate. It is also partly to do with the fact that some local CJS partners (the police and the CPS for example) may have centrally set annual targets which pro-actively ensure that more incidents are recorded and more young people are charged, and so, whilst they are all members of crime and disorder partnerships or other statutory partnerships, such as those which concern children and young people, they are constrained in their action, and there is no incentive to undertake things in a different fashion.

These things reflect the fact that no guidance over the past 30 years has taken into account the basic fact that if you want to prevent youth offending, you have to analyse plan and evaluate in a continuous process, long term, at least for a 5 – 10 year period. For example a literacy or vocational skill initiative which is undertaken in one year may support more 13 year olds to stay in school, which could impact on youth offending figures in 5 years time. Practically speaking this is about the years in which a young person may be most vulnerable to criminality – age 10 –20. The wider picture, tackling poverty and poor parenting, health issues etc – starts in early years and could go right through to age 25.

Join the coalition...
We want national and local politicians to work with us on these issues, and not put obstacles in the way; we want national and local media to stop stereotyping and demonising young people.

We need to act on this issue – TOGETHER and NOW – I appeal to my colleagues in the Third sector and elsewhere – sign up to the Coalition, and let’s start getting this right. We are delighted that so many organisations have already signed up to the coalition and hope many more will do the same.

Barbara Natasegara MBE
Chief Executive
Safer Wales Ltd

The Fear Factory Blog

The Fear Factory Blog will feature contributions from coalition members, key stake holders, organsiations and individuals working in the field of youth justice.