SCHOOLYARD pranks used to result in detention and stern words from the head teacher. Now children face handcuffs and seven hours of questioning, thanks to the Government’s Safer Schools scheme.

Although a police presence in some schools was supposed to make them safer places, critics say that officers are too quick to arrest and prosecute, creating a fingerprinted generation who will have to live with a criminal record.

“If these kids are convicted, it is on their record for life. How are they going to get jobs? How does this benefit society?” asks Shauneen Lambe, the director of Just for Kids Law, in The Times Educational Supplement (Oct 27).

Introduced four years ago, the Safer Schools scheme now has police officers attached to more than 400 primary and secondary schools. But while full-time officers appear to reduce the number of arrests in schools, part-time officers are less effective.

“My impression is that some of the schools’ officers don’t want to do it and they perhaps aren’t the best people to do it,” says Professor Rod Morgan, of the Youth Justice Board.

Along with Martin Narey, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, Professor Morgan condemned the number of young offenders who end up in custody. Last year 210,000 young people were prosecuted, an increase of 25,000 since the mid-1990s.

“We have to disconnect law from order,” adds Will McMahon, of the Crime and Society Foundation in TES. “Mostly where there is a discipline problem it’s down to bad management. Criminalising children is not the answer.”

But a TES leader points out that despite shortcomings in the Safer Schools scheme, “we do not know how many knife attacks, assaults on teachers, even murders have been prevented by the police presence.”

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