More futurecrime

Tomorrow we can look forward to the launch of a government review:

expanding existing policies aimed at identifying potential troublemakers in the womb, with home visits for “vulnerable” mothers over a two-year period.

Cabinet Office sources suggested that the project could be extended to include families in which there is domestic violence or a parent has been sent to jail.

Which seems to provide a substantial disincentive to reporting domestic violence, lest your child ends up on myriad ‘future criminal’ databases. The idea that ‘vulnerable’ families:

could be given a period of “intensive home visits” by health visitors

is ludicrous. As we said recently, Amicus reports that the number of Health Visitors in England is at its lowest level in 12 years. What are the likely effects on HV’s genuine child health and protection work of adding ‘crime prevention’ duties to an already decimated workforce?

As for the confident assertion that future offenders can be predicted, we recommend a good look at the research:

1. Using only cases with full information, and using information to age 11 to predict multiple deprivation at age 23, 70.8% of those who go on to experience multiple deprivation at age 23 can be identified at age 11 (the true positive rate). 1.4% of those who do not experience adult deprivation are falsely predicted to do so (the false positive rate).

2. When cases without full information are also used, the true positive rate is 41.1%, with a false positive rate of 5.2%. The true rates are likely to be between these upper and lower bound estimates, but closer to the upper bound.

3. For the 1970 cohort, when only observations with full information are used, those with multiple deprivation in terms of 2 or more of 5 key outcomes at age 30 can be predicted in 87.1% of cases using data to age 10, with a false positive rate of 1.1%. When cases without full information are also used, the true positive rate is 43.7%, with a false positive rate of 8.1%.

4. Using only 5 constructs or pieces of information, assessed up to age 10, we can identify 35% of those who will experience 2 or more of 5 key high cost/harm outcomes at age 30, or, using a slightly different set of 5 constructs, 35% of those who will experience 9 or more from 30 diverse high cost/harm outcomes.

5. Using only 6 constructs assessed in childhood and also allowing for interactions between these constructs, sub-groups can be created that have probabilities that range between 17% and 77% for multiple deprivation in adulthood.

What are the chances of getting ‘full information’ outside of a research study, in the real world where practitioners are run off their feet, and parents quickly learn from others’ experiences that some questions need economical answers if they are to retain any shred of dignity?

No wonder the (eminent) authors of this report to the Home Office said:

any notion that better screening can enable policy makers to identify young children destined to join the 5 per cent of offenders responsible for 50-60 per cent of crime is fanciful. Even if there were no ethical objections to putting “potential delinquent” labels round the necks of young children, there would continue to be statistical barriers.

Research into the continuity of anti-social behaviour shows substantial flows out of – as well as in to – the pool of children who develop chronic conduct problems. This demonstrates the dangers of assuming that anti-social five-year-olds are the criminals or drug abusers of tomorrow, as well as for highlighting the undoubted opportunities that exist for prevention.

Compulsory reading

Nip over to Light Blue Touchpaper and read FIPR’s response to the Cabinet Office consultation on e-government information assurance. It’s all highly germane to the children’s e-CAF/’ContactPoint’ database duo. eg:

Aggregating large quantities of sensitive information, to which more and more people then need access in order to do their jobs, simultaneously increases the value of the target and the number of people through whose carelessness or disloyalty it can be compromised.

Be sure to read the comments to catch Ross Anderson in full splenetic flow, too.

The real problem

There’s some thoughtful writing on Gillick competency over at Not Saussure (and I’m not just saying that because he gives the report to the ICO on children’s databases a favourable name-check). He considers the recent ten-minute rule bill to overturn, for all the wrong reasons, the principles established in Gillick, while the misuse of those principles to justify data-sharing is completely overlooked.

They’re at it again…

Yesterday, Simon Jenkins told a story that is strangely familiar to us.

Sensitive readers may avert their eyes, for this column concerns this newspaper and its relations with the Blair government and, dare I say it, money. On Wednesday they may have noticed a special section called Promised Lands…

The section ominously carried no advertising, but was not headed “advertising supplement”. Yet it was paid for by the government’s Housing Market Renewal Partnerships – which agreed the synopsis – to boost the controversial Pathfinder housing policy. In return for a large sum of money, the agency was offered pre-sight of the copy to “correct inaccuracies”. In effect, it secured sympathetic coverage. None of the writers (nor the Guardian’s readers) was told of this, or that their fees were being paid, in effect, by the Blair government. Some were given to understand that they were writing for the Observer.

Funnily enough, excatly the same thing happened last October, only on that occasion the subject was ‘Every Child Matters’ – the government’s database ‘n’ information-sharing agenda. As we wrote at the time:

We’d always thought of the Guardian as a newspaper that could be trusted to give thoughtful comment about social issues. No doubt the government thinks so too. Presumably that is why they chose to pay Guardian journalists to write a puff on ‘Every Child Matters’.

The rest is here.

HT: Liberal England

Local Authorities disobey ‘Working together’

When I was tagged in December to write about the 7 best things that had happened in 2006, I mentioned discovering that:

after a 6-month battle, the coalition of organisations we’d pulled together had persuaded government not to introduce mandatory police/social services reporting for under-16s using sexual health services.

Our jubilation was a bit premature. The guidance issued by government (‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’) is not statutory, and so ARCH and Brook joined forces to gather in the sexual health protocols of each local authority in order to see if any had included mandatory reporting. We found that over one-third of authorities are instructing clinicians to report any sexually active child under 13.

Whatever one’s views on 12-year-olds having sexual relationships, the policy is utterly misguided. Practitioners are well aware of the potential for abuse, and that the younger the person, the greater the risk. If children are deterred from accessing services altogether for fear of being automatically reported to the police, the opportunity to help those in abusive relationships simply vanishes. They are also left in danger of contracting STIs and/or getting pregnant.

The police in some areas have said that, although they will only prosecute if a relationship is abusive, they will hold all details as ’soft intelligence’, which could have later repercussions for someone needing an advanced CRB check in order to work with children.

The dog’s dinner that was the Sexual Offences Act 2003 created a situation where anyone over 10 can be prosecuted for sexual activity, but at the same time is deemed too young to understand sufficiently to offer valid consent. Go figure. There is no defence of consent available, and all attempts to get a ‘parity of age’ + consent (a ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ clause, common in other EU countries) failed dismally when the Act was going through parliament.

The provisions in relation to under-13s have particularly worrying implications, because intercourse is classed as rape, and leads to automatic lifelong sex-offender registration – regardless of the age of the offender.

The Telegraph today carries a story on this, although they’ve managed to avoid mentioning ARCH altogether, despite the fact that it was a joint press release. It’s a regular occurrence with the Telegraph and Mail, though – we reckon it’s because they can’t bear to put ‘children’ and ‘rights’ in the same sentence!

More from the Myatt inquest

The inquest into the death of Gareth Myatt continues. Community Care reports:

One of the custody officers who was restraining Gareth Myatt when he died was investigated a year earlier in 2003 over his approach to behaviour management, a court has heard.

[David] Beadnall was internally investigated for using pain-inducing “distraction” techniques too often, the court heard. Documents from Rainsbrook showed his use of such methods decreased after he was supervised, but Beadnall told the court he had no recollection of the probe.

…The court heard how Beadnall, who is six foot two and heavily built, was in charge of the block at the centre, near Rugby, on the night of Myatt’s death. He and colleagues Diane Smith and David Bailey had restrained the four foot ten teenager, who weighed six and a half stone, after he became disruptive.

Secure Training Centres are privately run prisons for 12-15-year-olds, Rainsbrook and Medway both being in the hands of Group4Falck subsidiary, ‘Rebound’. In an adjournment debate last November, MP Sally Keeble pointed out that

At Medway and Rainsbrook, however, the position is more serious. Those are the two secure training centres with the greatest use of restraint. One of them was also the scene of the serious incident last April. In addition, I understand that those centres did not allow admission to the consultants employed by the Home Office to carry out the review of physical control in care.

As she goes on to say, the Home Office should have terminated the contracts when they were refused access. They are the public authority responsible for offender-management, and cannot simply abrogate all responsibility by handing children over to private-sector prisons.

If you can stomach it, Sally Keeble’s speech also explains what is meant by ‘distraction techniques’. Clue: they’re not the same as the sort of thing parents do when they can see that their toddler is on the verge of a mega-tantrum (if they don’t want to end up in court, that is).

It’s astonishing how little attention the mainstream media is paying to this inquest. Nobody outside the comment columns of the tabloids would seriously suggest that assault or execution are acceptable judicial punishments for children (or anyone else, for that matter) so where is all the public outrage about this?

The red mist continues

Today started so promisingly. As I pottered in the early morning sunshine, checking on the progress of the beetroot and broad beans, yesterday’s toddler-targets were a million miles away. “I will stay calm today,” I thought. And then I saw this:

The police are to set up “retail jails” on high streets and in busy shopping malls to detain yobs and other offenders for up to four hours under Home Office proposals published yesterday.

Talks are under way to open the first of these short-term holding cells in Selfridges department store on Oxford Street in London. The five purpose-built rooms would be smaller than normal cells and made of Perspex so that suspects are visible.

Ah, so out of the window (again) goes Art 40 of the UNCRC:

Every child alleged as or accused of having infringed the penal law has at least the following guarantees:…To have his or her privacy fully respected at all stages of the proceedings.

And this is chilling:

The consultation paper goes on to ask whether there is scope to “remove the operational constraints” on inputting DNA, fingerprint and photographs into other anti-crime databases.

Just take a look at the number of children’s ‘anti-crime‘ databases.

And they’re seriously thinking of putting fingerprints and DNA profiles on them? Dear God.

The national human being curriculum

Oh good grief:

Every nursery, childminder and reception class in Britain will have to monitor children’s progress towards a set of 69 government-set “early learning goals”, recording them against more than 500 development milestones as they go.

At five, each child will be assessed against 13 scales based on the learning goals and their score, called an early years profile, must be passed to the Department for Education and Skills.

Since I don’t trust myself to write about it until the red mist clears, I’ll forward you to Not Saussure.

DNA retention goes to Strasbourg

You might not have heard of Michael Marper, but he is very important to all of us. In 2001, Marper (who had no police record) was acquitted of harassment and asked the police to destroy the DNA sample they had taken from him. They declined to do so.

His case wound its way to the Court of Appeal, where it was refused. In fact the Lord Chief Justice remarked:

‘Not all un-convicted people are equal from a policing point of view, even though they are from a legal one; …the courts know well that among [those acquitted] is a significant proportion – markedly higher than in the un-convicted population at large – who will offend in the future’.

On went Marper to the House of Lords, and was again refused. Privacy International has the full text of the judgment.

Now, though, Marper has got through the first round of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and:

That court last month ruled that his case raised serious questions of fact and law that needed to be properly considered by the court.

The short judgment records that since the introduction of the amended power of retention, more than 11,600 offences had been detected, involving more than 7,800 offenders, using DNA evidence that would previously have been removed from the DNA database. However, concerns remain that the retained samples may be used in the future, even if that is not happening now, for purposes beyond identifying and eliminating persons as suspects in particular crimes.

For those of us in England and Wales, Strasbourg’s final judgment is likely to decide whether the National DNA Database contracts, or expands to include all of us.

Playing spies

Pippa has the lowdown on a primary head who obtained pupils’ fngerprints by subterfuge:

A primary school headmaster has outraged parents after he tricked his pupils into recording their fingerprints by telling them they were playing spies.

Children were persuaded to give their prints after being told by Mark Woodburn that it was ‘just a game…so there’s no need to tell your parents’.

EDM 686 now has 70 signatures. If you haven’t already done so, contact your MP to give him/her a nudge.

Red Nose warning

How it all works

For anyone still feeling confused about the relationship between the Information Sharing Index ‘Contactpoint’, the Integrated Children’s System and the eCAF, the DfES has published a handy guide called ‘How ICS, CAF and ContactPoint fit together: A short essay on Harnessing Information for ECM’ (ECM = Every Child Matters)

The document is keen to stress that no case information will be held on ‘Contactpoint’, provoking another of those “do they think our heads button up the back?” moments. It doesn’t need to hold case information! Once practitioners are in contact with each other, case information can be exchanged directly between their systems, thanks to the government’s e-GIF (e-Government Interoperability Framework) which mandates that all systems must be able talk to each other.

As in:

Better public services tailored to the needs of the citizen and business, require the seamless flow of information across government. The e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) sets out the government’s technical policies and specifications for achieving interoperability and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems coherence across the public sector. The e-GIF defines the essential prerequisites for joined-up and web-enabled government.

Worth bearing in mind the government estimate that 1 in 3 children will need the extra services for which an in-depth eCAF assessment will need to be carried out. You have to hand it to them – it’s a pretty good way of finding out what happens behind the front doors of one-third of the families in England.

Still no DNA figures in sight

A brief debate in the Lords yesterday followed a question from the Earl of Onslow:

How many samples of DNA have been retained from those who have not been convicted of any offence; how many of those are children, and how many from ethnic minority groups.

Needless to say, no figures were forthcoming. Grant Shapps has already tried to get the figures for children; the children’s commissioners are busting a gut to get them, and now the Earl of Onslow joins the ranks of those who have been told that the Home Office is working on a ‘technical solution’ to find out how many unconvicted children are on the National DNA database.

What puzzles us is that the Home Office managed to come up with a figure of 24,168 just over a year ago. It’s very specific, isn’t it? It’s not: “Oooh, I should reckon around 25,000″. So why can’t they get the figures now? Dates of birth are recorded on both the Police National Computer (criminal record) and NDNAD (DNA profile). They’ve managed figures for the population as a whole, so why can they not extract the data for everyone born after March 1989?

On the other hand, we’ve always suspected that the apparently precise figure of 24,168 was cobblers – see our submission to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics for the reasosn.

‘Bring Back the Orphanages’

There’s a documentary worth watching on Channel 4 tonight at 7.30. ‘Bring Back the Orphanages’ by Phil Frampton is far from misty-eyed, but makes a strong case for residential care:

Frampton chronicled a life of neglect and desolation in that home – along with the best efforts of a well-meaning matron – in his memoir, Golly in the Cupboard. Yet he argues, in a Channel 4 programme to be broadcast on Friday, that the modern emphasis on foster care for nearly 90% of looked-after children is misguided. “This place gave us stability,” he says. “We stayed in the same schools, so our education wasn’t disrupted. It meant we learnt to care for each other, to respect each other, even to love one another. Sibling families were catered for, so that brothers and sisters didn’t have to be split up.”

This splitting of families is barbaric. What could be worse for a child who has been taken into care – particularly after bereavement – than to lose their whole family? When you consider that many children move around a series of temporary homes, separated from brothers and sisters, for the rest of their childhood, it’s hardly surprising that they have what is euphemistically described as ‘poor outcomes’. While a residential home is not right for every child, they should at least have the choice.

As Frampton pointed out in Community Care recently:

Thousands of young people in care are forced to endure 20-plus moves. They lose their friends, their schooling and their self-esteem.

Sibling families, after they are comfortably placed in traditional residential homes, are nowadays also expected to suffer the trauma of being split up. A recent survey carried out by charity A National Voice found that more than 75 per cent of young people in care reported difficulty seeing their siblings.

Technology seeks home

Parental anxiety has already proved to be fertile ground for technologies looking for a market, and companies are certainly quick off the mark with this one:

Internet-based home monitoring services could be a key component in delivering government targets for getting parents back into the workplace, it was claimed today.

Companies [] argue that technology such as internet-based home monitoring services can allow busy parents to work and still feel that their children are safe.

Apparently the gizmos even come with smoke detectors, so you can watch your house burning down (with your children in it) from your office.