Community Protection Notices: Children
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has considered the merits of allowing police to issue Community Protection Warnings and Notices to 10-16 year-olds.
Answered by Sarah Jones
Breach of a CPN is a criminal offence. Lowering the age that someone can receive a CPN from 16 to 10 years old risks putting young people into the criminal justice system.
While early and informal prevention-based approaches should generally be the first step where ASB is being perpetrated by a child, for the most serious cases of child-perpetrated anti-social behaviour, we already have powers available. The Civil Injunction is available for children from 10-18 and enables youth courts to make behavioural conditions to prevent ASB. It is for the youth court to determine if, on the balance of probabilities, the legal test is met, and it is just and convenient in the circumstances to grant a Youth Injunction.
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