Star comment: Youths in prison still need care

Punishing persistent criminals harshly, locking them away from society instead of giving them cushy, wishy-washy community sentences which don't hit them where it hurts, has always been a vote winner.

And just days ago, Britain's perceived soft-touch justice system was put into sharp focus by new official figures showing that ex-prisoners are now being reconvicted or cautioned at a rate of almost 900 a day.

Short, sharp stints in prison, for these persistent law breakers, are quite clearly not a deterrent any more.

But the quest to make our jails a less pleasant place in which to live at Her Majesty's pleasure must never translate into a lack of care, or a slipping of basic standards.

Adam Rushton was not perfect. His adoptive mother was the first to acknowledge that. But what happened to him when he was locked up at the notorious Brinsford Young Offenders Institution should never have been allowed to happen.

Time after time, expert advice was ignored, and basic protocols were not followed.

Authorities are now queueing up to condemn the actions which contributed to the 20-year-old taking his own life, branding Brinsford a squalid, unsafe, ineffective and inhumane institution.

But talk is cheap. The same old thing has been preached for years like a crackly old record.

More than 10 years ago, Robert Lake from the Association of Directors of Social Services told the Shropshire Star: "The problem with placing children in the wrong situation is that they may abuse others or be abused by others. In the worse situation we may end up with children who commit suicide."

So clearly, concerns over the Government's get-tough policy on young offenders and its attitude to the social problems facing young people in general, are nothing new.

We should not use the death of serial young offenders in custody as a reason to stop locking them up. But equally, we should appreciate that young people often face a different cocktail of mental issues, and try to understand them.