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A rising number of young people who offend are being consigned to “human warehouses” that do nothing to help rehabilitate them, Community Care deputy editor Janet Snell told a fringe event at the Liberal Democrats’ conference this week.

Speaking at a joint Community Care and Barrow Cadbury Trust event focusing on 18- to 24-year olds in the criminal justice system, she said: “We need to make more use of alternatives to jail.

“But when vulnerable young people do end up behind bars, the least we can do is to address the problems that got them there in the first place.”

The meeting heard that young people often received short sentences and were shifted from jail to jail, making it impossible to do any constructive work with them.