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The Youth Justice Board's plans for new panels to identify children at risk of offending have come under fire from children's charities and human rights organisations.

Critics fear that the plans to target children as young as eight could result in the age of criminal responsibility being lowered, children being "labelled" from a young age and families being discouraged from co-operating with agencies that offer help.

Board chairperson Lord Warner outlined the proposals at a youth justice conference held last week by the Association of Chief Police Officers. "We need to ensure that a prevention strategy is directed at early intervention with those young people most at risk of becoming offenders or more serious offenders," Warner told delegates. "We need to respond before offending behaviour has fully developed or escalated into serious offending."


Warner announced that 10 multi-agency youth inclusion and support panels would be introduced in high-level street crime areas. They would be comprised of experts from youth offending teams, social services, education, the police and the health service and would jointly identify eight to 13-year-olds who displayed problematic behaviour.

Those children may be at risk of offending through drug misuse, mental health problems, anti-social behaviour or family issues and would be referred to the panel with their families. Attendance would be voluntary. The panel aims to direct the child and family into mainstream services and provide key workers to offer dedicated help to those who most need it.

Warner said the Association of Chief Police Officers was among the parties drawing up an information-sharing protocol on those at risk of offending. This would be "a powerful tool for the agencies involved to identify those at risk of offending and to help prevent crime in the future".

The scheme - a joint initiative between the board, the government's children and young people's unit, both of which fund it, and the Association of Chief Police Officers - will be piloted in the next six months. Details of funding and the targeted areas will be announced soon. But Warner said chancellor Gordon Brown's spending review announcement that 25 per cent of the expanded Children's Fund should be spent on youth crime prevention "provides a huge opportunity to implement and prioritise prevention work".

The children and young people's unit has already unveiled its preventive strategy, an information sharing system for at-risk children, known as Identification, Referral and Tracking. Minister for young people John Denham announced last month that local authorities, the health service, police and key criminal justice agencies would agree local strategies for next year.

"Essential parts of the strategy will be effective systems to identify children and families needing support, to exchange information between agencies and track the progress through agency referrals," Denham said.

The strategy is being piloted in six authorities until next year and the unit will consider how best to proceed from there.

Once identified as at-risk, the children may be referred to various areas for support, one of which will be the new panels.

The idea behind the scheme originates from other projects. One is run by Barnardo's in Blackpool, but the children's charity is "extremely concerned" about the plans linking support so closely to the criminal justice system. Says Barnardo's principal policy officer Pam Hibbert: "We are faced with the abhorrent possibility of 11- and 12-year-old children being held in prison department custody."

The age of criminal responsibility in England is 10, but the charity fears the proposals "will result in a de facto lowering of the age to eight". It believes that because in law a child younger than 10 cannot be deemed to have committed an offence, even behaviour that gives cause for concern should be dealt with in a way that puts the child's welfare first.

The concerns are echoed by the Children's Society. Sharon Moore, principal policy and practice manager, says the charity welcomes the idea of support for children identified as at risk of offending. "But we are deeply concerned that plans for crime prevention panels could lead to the age of criminal responsibility being lowered through the back door," she says.

Earlier this month, the United Nations said the UK was labelling 10-year-old children as criminals (news analysis, page 20, 31 October), yet Moore says Warner's proposals would result in even younger children being dealt with by the criminal justice system.


Human rights groups have also raised concerns. "There are obvious dangers in creating a database that tags young people as 'pre-criminals'," says Roger Bingham, spokesperson for civil liberties group Liberty. "Will it mean young people being targeted by the police in future years?"

Families may also be more reluctant to co-operate with social services and police for fear of children being labelled "future criminals".

Warner acknowledges that there is some controversy over the proposals, especially over the labelling of children. He told the conference that the board believed the move would in fact do the opposite.

"These young people, by definition, will be well known to the relevant agencies in one form or another," he said. "The panels will be about intervening early so that as they grow up these young people are no longer labelled by the community or the agencies as problem children." In his experience, many families would have welcomed early support with their children before problems escalated.

But the proposals are backed by the National Children's Bureau. Chief executive Paul Ennals says Warner was trying to strike the right balance. "We must move forward fast and introduce better preventive measures," Ennals says.

Children's agencies had been calling for police, social services and education to work together to improve communication as there is not an effective, joined-up mechanism in place, he says. "It would be perverse to criticise it now."

Rehabilitation agency Nacro also acknowledges the benefits of the panels. "Children going through difficulties and their families can often benefit from supportive intervention from state agencies and appropriate charities," a spokesperson says.

"But this should be on the basis of their welfare needs, not because they might be the potential criminal of the future. Many children and young people commit crime or are disruptive as they grow up. Few of these grow into the career criminals of popular imagination."

Brian Harrison-Jennings, general secretary of the Association of Educational Psychologists, says the scheme is intended with the best possible motive. Even so, he has reservations. He agrees with Bingham and Moore that it is likely children identified as at risk will be labelled with a code name in the way that children with a special educational needs statement can be referred to as "statemented".

"The problem with Lord Warner's approach is that children are being identified for negative reasons, for being troublesome," he says. There is a danger that, after identification, children may try to live up to the reputation they have acquired. The child could then be excluded from school and end up in a pupil referral unit, coming into contact with like-minded pupils. They will have a reputation as "hard" and may suffer psychological damage.

This sort of intervention can, Harrison-Jennings says, "exacerbate rather than improve" the situation. He says if intervention and support began at birth it would be seen as the norm and problems could be targeted before the child is eight.

This should include easily accessible parenting classes for parents who experience difficulties. "What is needed is early intervention of a positive nature with a view to preventive work," he says.