Youth Justice News
| Author | Tim Bateman |
| DOI | 10.1177/147322540400400106 |
| Published date | 01 April 2004 |
| Date | 01 April 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Compiled by Tim Bateman
Correspondence: Tim Bateman, Nacro, 169 Clapham Road, London SW9 0PU.
Email: tim.batemanVnacro.org.uk
Audit Commission Confirms That Youth Justice is a Reformed
Character
The Audit Commission’s previous report on the youth justice system, Misspent Youth,
published in 1996, was extremely influential in shaping the subsequent reforms
associated with the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The Commission’s latest review of
the impact of those changes on performance is clearly of major significance, both as
an evaluation of the reforms and as an influence on likely future developments. Youth
Justice 2004: A Review of the Reformed Youth Justice System was published on 21 January
2004, alongside a report produced by the National Audit Office focusing specifically
on the delivery of community and custodial sentences. The two reports are intended
to be complementary, providing a comprehensive picture of the current youth justice
landscape.
In a nutshell, the Audit Commission reports that a great deal has been achieved
within a relatively short period of time, but that there are nonetheless areas where
further improvements might be made. The indicators of success will be familiar to
many of those with an interest in the youth crime agenda. The Youth Justice Board
for England and Wales has provided a degree of national co-ordination that was
previously lacking and, through the development of guidance on effective practice and
assessment frameworks, has attempted to promote consistent practice. Youth
offending teams (YOTs) are well established and widely recognised as a successful
innovation, providing a model for multi-agency public service delivery in other sectors.
When children and young people come to the attention of the criminal justice system
more is being done to address their offending and intervention is now more likely to
be based on assessed need. There has, too, been a substantial increase in the overall
level of resources allocated to working with young people in trouble. An increased
focus on restorative principles, in particular associated with the implementation of the
referral order, is welcomed as a way of encouraging young people to take responsibility
for their behaviour and taking account of victim’s needs. Magistrates surveyed by the
Audit Commission, express consistently high levels of satisfaction with local youth
justice services.
While it is important to acknowledge and build on progress, the youth justice
landscape will not stay still for long (see the news item immediately below for the latest
Government proposals). It is, therefore, perhaps inevitable that the reservations
expressed in the report will attract greater interest since they will help shape the debate
about the future direction of reform.
Despite the commitment to multi-agency delivery at a strategic level, YOTs still
experience difficulties in accessing the full range of services to meet young people’s
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Youth Justice News
assessed needs, with health, education and social services provision all proving
problematic. In part, the report suggests, this results from a lack of congruence
between performance indicators for different agencies. There is, as a consequence, a
temptation for YOTs to extend their operations in an attempt to make good the
shortfall in provision from mainstream services. The report recommends that the
temptation should be resisted and that YOTs should continue to focus on their ‘core
business’.
Levels of custody remain extremely high and the Commission notes that locking up
children is considerably more expensive than community based provision. (The Board
spends almost three-quarters of its total budget providing placements within the
juvenile secure estate.) Yet custody is also relatively ineffective in reducing reoffending.
Worryingly, the longstanding overrepresentation of black and ethnic minority young
people, at both remand stage and sentence, increased between 2000/01 and 2002/03.
The report by the National Audit Office too, provides a wealth of data indicating
why the high use of custody remains a major concern:
( Incidents of self-harm within young offender institutions (YOIs) appear to have
increased.
( Limited capacity means that young people are frequently moved within the secure
estate – there were 2,400 such moves in the ten months from April 2002.
( Overcrowding also makes the Board’s target of placing 90 per cent of children within
50 miles of their home address difficult to achieve.
( Less than 20 per cent of YOTs consider that YOIs are able to meet the health,
welfare and education needs of the young people placed within them.
The Audit Commission welcomes the introduction of intensive supervision and
surveillance programmes (ISSPs) as a mechanism for providing high levels of support
to young people whose offending is...
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