Tony Blair has let young offenders down. In what was undoubtedly his last opportunity to place youth justice reform on the legislative agenda, he has opted instead for yet more bills bringing in powers and duties to tackle antisocial behaviour and ignored a two-year-old promise of legislation to overhaul the youth justice system.
The only reference to young offenders in this week's Queen's Speech was the introduction of a "generic communty sentence" to deal with them. However, it is not yet clear what this will mean in practice. Any attempt to impose a blunt one-size-fits-all response would clearly be totally inappropriate.
What we are more likely to see is something similar to the "single youth rehabilitation order, with a menu of interventions", as proposed in the Home Office's five year strategy as a replacment to the nine existing community sentences for young offenders.
But it will be imperative that any such "menu" is varied enough to ensure the "generic community sentence" can be suitably and sufficiently tailored according to each offence committed and each young person's needs. The good work of YIPs and YISPs and other progressive programmes must also not be lost.
Whatever happens, we must not end up in a situation where having only one option rather than a sliding scale of community responses means young people who commit further offences are even more likely to end up in custody than they are today. For a generic community sentence to have any chance of improving the youth justice system, the government would need to safeguard against magistrates refusing to consider using it for the same person more than once.