Thousands of 10 and 11-year-olds are prosecuted in our courts every year, yet it took one case of two children accused of raping an eight-year-old to enlighten the public about the absurdity of our system.

The Youth Court is a closed world, peopled by professionals, and very vulnerable children either with no visible parents or parents who are as baffled as their offspring. In the wake of the Bulger case, the European Court of Human Rights criticised the Crown Court process. But in most ways, the Youth Court is no better than the Crown Court. The layout is very similar, including a secure dock for defendants. The people in the court are mostly the same. And the law is the same.

‘Specialist’ training for Youth Court magistrates and judges includes little about child welfare, about young offenders’ learning difficulties and mental health problems, or about the effectiveness of the sentences on offer.

But at least magistrates have to undergo some specialist training before gaining the power to imprison a child. The lawyers who defend children need only be qualified solicitors. Many have never heard a lecture or gone to a tutorial on youth justice before they start practising.

In our campaign to reduce child and youth imprisonment, the Prison Reform Trust has talked to lawyers, judges and youth offending officers right across the country. Everyone has pointed to the variable quality of defence practice as part of the problem.

A Youth Offending Team manager said solicitors in his area seldom appeal custodial sentences. Another said solicitors do not understand the criteria for remand to local authority accommodation.

PRT and Just for Kids Law, a charity led by defence practitioners, are running free specialist training in Youth Court law and practice (tinyurl.com/outoftrouble). We get solicitors to role play an interview with a client, using real young offenders. For most participants this is the first time they have received any training in how to interact with children, even though they have been doing it for years.

Of the thousands of solicitors and barristers who work in the Youth Court, only some will do specialist training. Some work so infrequently with children that they do not think it worth their while. In our experience it is the solicitors with little training or experience in the Youth Court who struggle to defend young people well.

In other areas of the law, such as immigration or representing children in child care proceedings, a lawyer who is not accredited cannot practice.

We think that all solicitors who defend in the Youth Court should have specialist accreditation, achieved through specialist training and maintained by proving that some CPD every year is devoted to youth justice.

If all youth court defenders were accredited, young people could be confident that their lawyer understood not just the intricacies of youth justice legislation, but also how to recognise speech and language problems, how being in care may have led to their prosecution, and how they could find somewhere to live.

Of course, accreditation will not solve one perennial problem – that spending the extra time with challenging children does not pay. And in today’s world of legal aid cuts, there is little prospect that specially trained and accredited defence solicitors would get more money for Youth Court cases.

The answer lies in shrinking the Youth Court. Even with excellent defence, children under 14 in England and Wales are still convicted and imprisoned. Under our legislation they can receive a life sentence.

There is a lot of evidence that children this young are not fully aware of the impact of their actions, nor able to participate in the court process. In most Western European countries, they are dealt with by the welfare system, not the criminal justice system. If our government took the bold step of raising the age of criminal responsibility, it would save millions in police, court and legal aid resources. This money could be reinvested in setting up an accreditation scheme for youth court solicitors, in specialist training and in paying more to solicitors who defend young people.

Penelope Gibbs is director of the Out of Trouble Programme at the Prison Reform Trust