"Professor Morgan's resignation is an indictment of the Government's policy on youth crime. Prison for young people is an expensive way of making them worse. At a cost to the taxpayer of £50,800 a year per offender and reoffending rates running at 82%, we are just churning out better young criminals. Locking up so many children means young offender institutions are full to bursting point.

She continued:

"When is the Government going to put in place a coherent strategy that really begins to reduce crime committed by young people - rather than continuing to fill them up with damaged kids for whom prevention measures have failed so miserably?"

92 MPs, from all the major political parties, have signed the SmartJustice for Young People Early Day Motion.

SmartJustice for Young People is demanding an end to the warehousing of record numbers of children and young people in prisons that just churn out better criminals. Following a survey of almost 1,000 crime victims, SmartJustice for Young People calls for more support to improve parenting, more constructive activities for young people and more compulsory work schemes in the community where young offenders make amends for the damage they’ve caused.

ends

For more information and interviews please call:

Lucie Russell 020 7689 7734 or 07931 507873

Sinead Hanks 020 7689 7734 or 07931 380952

Notes to Editors

1. SmartJustice is a five year campaign which promotes community based solutions to crime. It is based at the Prison Reform Trust and supported by the Network for Social Change, the group behind the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt Campaign, and the Big Lottery Fund

2. SmartJustice for Young People is calling for more constructive activities for young people, more support to improve parenting, more mental health and drug treatment in the community and more punishments in which young offenders do compulsory work to pay back the community for their crimes.

3. SmartJustice recently ran a poll of 972 victims of crime carried out in conjunction with Victim Support. The most striking findings of the survey, conducted by ICM, was that two thirds of victims believed prison didn’t work in reducing re-offending and that over three quarters of victims think that more constructive activities for young people in the community, better supervision by parents and more drug, alcohol and mental health treatment programmes would be far more effective.

4. Facts about young people and crime:

· On 12 January there were 11,617 people in prison under the age of 21.
78% of 18 to 20 year olds and 82% of under 18’s are reconvicted within two years of leaving prison.

· The number of 15 to 17 year olds in prison has doubled in the last 10 years and the number of sentenced young women imprisoned has almost trebled.

· Young people are much more likely to end up with a prison sentence than they were 10 years ago

· Almost half the children in prison have been convicted of non-violent offences - more children are in prison for robbery than any other offence

· Over eight out of ten boys under 18 who were released from prison were reconvicted within two years.

· Over half of under 18s have been in care and three in four of those held in young offenders' institutions have not attended school beyond the age of 13.

· Over half of 16-20 year olds who are locked up say they were dependent on drugs or alcohol in the year prior to imprisonment.

· One in three girls locked up has been subjected to sexual abuse, and one in four has experienced violence at home.