The Economist - UK (2022-06-04)

22 Britain The Economist June 4th 2022

Criminal justice

Youth offender,

adult criminal

W

hen Rob Moussalli, a criminal-de-

fence solicitor at Burton Copeland, a

law firm in Manchester, started represent-

ing a 15-year-old arrested in connection

with a violent crime in December 2019, he

expected the case to make its way to court

quickly. Instead the police investigation

dragged on for months, then years. His cli-

ent turned 16, then 17. Mr Moussalli calls

the delays “ridiculous”. For others in the

same boat, they can be life-altering.

Children who are accused of commit-

ting an offence and who turn 18 before get-

ting their day in court must be tried and

sentenced in the adult criminal-justice

system. The likelihood of that happening

has gone up. In the year ending March 2021

there were 50,000-odd arrests of children.

It took an average of 219 days from the time

of a suspected offence until the end of a

trial, if one occurred (see chart). That is six

weeks more than one year earlier, and four

months more than a decade earlier.

The delays stem from longer investiga-

tions, cuts to court budgets and pandemic-

related backlogs. A report by Just for Kids, a

charity, cited estimates from the Youth Jus-

tice Board, a public body, that 2-3% of pro-

ven offences committed by children in

2018 were by someone who turned 18 prior

to his or her conviction. The pandemic is

likely to have inflated that proportion.

Just under two-fifths of children arrest-

ed in recent years have wound up in court;

of these, two-thirds received sentences.

Those who turn 18 before their first hearing

lose out in multiple ways. During the trial

itself, for example, these young adults lose

the anonymity afforded to nearly all chil-

dren, which can make it more difficult for

them to enrol in university or rent a flat. If

they are found guilty, they are denied ac-

cess to specific types of youth sentences

like referral orders, a non-custodial sen-

tence for first-time offenders.

Even when adult sentences are the

same length as youth sentences, they have

a more enduring afterlife. The period of

time a crime would turn up on a basic

background check for an adult after a cus-

todial sentence of more than six months is

about double that for a child.

The youth criminal-justice system is

different for a reason: many children who

commit crimes are less likely to do so once

their brains mature and their judgment

improves. So keeping people accused of

childhood crimes from entering the adult

system is right. The Police, Crime, Sentenc-

ing and Courts Act, which was passed in

April, includes a provision that encourages

police to release suspects on bail before

charging them. There are time limits on

how long someone can be released on bail,

so this could speed investigations up.

But more could be done. Lawmakers

could assign the types of court and sen-

tence based on the age at which a defen-

dant is accused of committing a crime

rather than their current age. Advocates

tried unsuccessfully to include this in the

new act. Courts could also fast-track the

cases of children who are nearing 18. Dur-

ing the pandemic a working group was

created to ensure courts gave priority to

youth cases but its members are now meet-

ing less frequently.

As for Mr Moussalli’s client, he has not

yet turned 18 but one of his co-defendants,

who was 16 at the time of the alleged of-

fence, recently did. Because children who

are charged alongside adults must have

their cases heard in adult courts, Mr Mous-

salli’s client is also heading to Crown

Court. He will still be eligible for a youth

sentence, but his co-defendant will not. 

An 18th birthday is bad news for

children awaiting trial

Delay of reckoning

England and Wales, average number of days

from alleged offence* to completion of trial

Source: Youth Justice Board

*Committed by children

aged 10-17 years

250

200

150

100

50

0

21191715132011

Electrification

Gridlocked

O

n may24th the Greater London Au-

thority, a governance body for the cap-

ital, wrote to the person in charge of plan-

ning and economic development in the

borough of Ealing. The letter, entitled

“Electricity Capacity in West London”, not-

ed that housing developers were facing de-

lays in connecting new homes to the grid,

and that electricity would not be available

to them until between 2027 and 2030. New

battery-storage systems and data centres

had already gobbled up capacity.

A boom in data-centre construction has

affected west London particularly badly.

This area is only a small part of a regional

grid that covers a swathe of southern Eng-

land, but it has received 90% of all applica-

tions to connect data centres to that grid in

the past two years. The amount of electric-

ity these new facilities require is very

roughly the same as west London’s entire

existing capacity.

The issue of insufficient capacity is a

national one. The government’s “net zero”

climate-change targets have increased de-

mand for electricity, which the existing in-

frastructure cannot meet quickly. National

Grid, which runs the backbone of Britain’s

electricity-transmission system, says that

requests to connect to the grid have qua-

drupled in the past four years.

This creates a problem. All electricity-

transmission networks in Britain are li-

censed by Ofgem, an energy regulator. The

licence obliges networks to treat all con-

nection requests equally and to fulfil them

only on a first-come, first-served basis. The

regulatory system also creates incentives

for new connection requests to be at the

signed-contracts stage before network op-

erators invest to expand capacity. In the

past this approach has saved money for

billpayers. Now it inhibits growth.

Ofgem says it is “aware” of the issue and

is “working with parties involved for an ef-

fective resolution”. National Grid and Scot-

tish and Southern Electricity Networks,

which operates the grid in west London,

are saying much the same. The short-term

fix is to ring up developers who have alrea-

dy been assigned capacity to ask if they

would be willing to give up their place in

the queue. The structural solution is to

change the regulatory regime.

That is necessary because growth in

connection requests will surely accelerate.

Networks have barely begun to accommo-

date the charging-points that will be re-

quired for electric vehicles. Much of Brit-

ain’s heating must be moved from gas to

electricity, further increasing demand. All

this is a natural consequence of the legal

mandate that the country must reach net-

zero emissions by 2050. The government

should free up Britain’s electricity grid to

adapt to changes that it is ushering in. 

A queue to connect to the grid in London reveals a bigger problem