Youth Justice News
| Author | Marcus Roberts |
| DOI | 10.1177/147322540200200206 |
| Published date | 01 August 2002 |
| Date | 01 August 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Youth Justice News
Compiled by Marcus Roberts, NACRO
Correspondence: Dr Marcus Roberts, Nacro, 169 Clapham Road, London SW9 OPU.
Email: Marcus.RobertsVnacro.org.uk
Social Exclusion Unit’s Report on Resettlement
On 1 July, the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) published the long-awaited report Reducing
Re-offending by Ex-prisoners. It estimates that re-offending by people released from prison
accounts for 1 million crimes each year, at an annual cost of £11 billion to society.
A raft of measures are recommended to tackle high rates of re-offending by ex-prisoners,
including piloting a ‘Going Straight Contract’, which would initially be targeted at 18 to
20-year-olds. At the beginning of the prison sentence, prisoners would be asked to sign a
contract, setting out what is expected of them throughout their sentence and providing a
package of rehabilitative help and support, based on a comprehensive assessment, covering the
entire sentence and overseen by a designated case worker. In addition, these contracts will
provide for payments from prison wages into a reparation fund for the victims of crime, and
a fund for case managers to use for the prisoner’s rehabilitation in the community. Case
managers would have the option of withholding these rehabilitation funds in the community,
should prisoners not fulfill the conditions of the contract.
The report considers the specific resettlement needs of juvenile and young adult prisoners
in some detail, notably in annexes D and E respectively.
The SEU’s concerns about the current arrangements for juvenile prisoners include the following:
(There is no systematic action to address the conditions which the young person leaves
behind when entering secure accommodation.
(Only a minority of the time available to youth offending teams is spent on activity directly
related to the young people in their charge, and a tiny proportion on visiting custody and
working with juveniles on licence.
(Records often fail to follow the young offender around the system.
(Sudden moves at short notice from establishment to establishment, or from custody to
community, can disrupt provision and planning and can be traumatic for the young person.
(Typically a juvenile will move from a lifestyle of intensive supervision and activity in prison,
to a situation where there is next to nothing by way of close mentoring or incentives in the
community.
(The rise in short-term detention and training orders is considered to be of questionable value
in terms of both punishment and rehabilitation.
(Young offender institutions do not provide all young people with an acceptable education.
(The dispersal system means that young people are often kept a long way from home, limiting
the effectiveness of resettlement measures.
(Too many young people remain in custody when they need in-patient mental health care.
(There is an acute lack of acceptable housing for juveniles when they leave custody.
(Discharge grants are not paid to juvenile offenders, so many are left to rely on family support
or benefits, which is particularly problematic given that benefit provision for 16 to
17-year-olds is limited and the system for claiming is complex.
(There is little evidence of relevant expertise either among secure unit staff, or among YOT
workers, to advise on financial matters, nor of Jobcentre Plus liaising effectively with these
services.
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