Councillors called on to visit young people in secure settings

By Janaki Mahadevan Wednesday, 19 October 2011

The children's commissioner for England has sent out a plea to local authority leaders to visit children and young people imprisoned as a result of rioting and looting this summer.

Speaking at an event entitled Moving on from the Riots at the National Children and Adult Services Conference in London, Atkinson said many young people involved in the disturbances had simply got "caught up" in the excitement.

She also said the nature of the secure estate meant that with increased numbers of young people being imprisoned as a result of the riots, councillors and officials had a responsibility to scrutinise those secure settings.

"The stark figures about what happens to children and young people in our youth justice system, even the most humane settings, are really important for us all to learn," Atkinson said. "Children who are incarcerated are 18 times more likely to take their own lives; seven out of 10 of them will reoffend. What we are doing to children and young people in the secure estate in particular needs constant scrutiny.

"If you are a councillor or a senior official and you have youngsters from your patch in secure accommodation please go and visit them because even the most humane cannot provide the family environment that children and young people need."

Vice-president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services Debbie Jones added her concern about the harsh sentences meted out to some of the young people.

"A lot of the young people who got involved opportunistically had never been involved in this kind of behaviour before and the consequences of dealing with them one way, i.e. taking them through the sausage machine of the youth justice system has been incredibly scary," she said. "Some young people have ended up being secured into remand, who have never had that experience before. They have been escalated to the top of the tariff and this has led to a situations which frankly is concerning in terms of their vulnerability."

The ADCS’s policy lead on youth justice Andrew Webb also voiced his disappointment at the youth justice system and its response to the riots.

He said: "My comment is about how depressed I have been by the current youth justice system’s response to the behaviour of young people. I think every young person needs to understand the consequences of their actions and face with the consequences of their actions.

"But our justice system punishes rather than does anything else. What we could put in the place of custody is restorative justice. Young people are not just young adults, they are immature and because they don’t really understand the consequences of what they are doing, our system needs to take account of that. We have to educate the electorate to say that restorative justice is a much better way of doing things."

Details of young offender deaths revealed

By Neil Puffett Thursday, 06 October 2011

Details of how 23 children under the supervision of youth offending teams died in the community last year have emerged after the Youth Justice Board released fresh information on the incidents.

Figures provided to CYP Now reveal that seven children died as a result of suicide, seven as a result of road traffic accidents and four were murdered.

A further two died from "potential suicide", while one death was classed as "suspicious". There was also one accidental fall and one accidental drowning.

Of the deaths, six occurred in the West Midlands, five in London, five in the North West, three in Yorkshire and the Humber, two in the East Midlands, one in Wales and one in the East of England.

Di Hart, principal officer of youth justice and welfare at the National Children's Bureau (NCB), said the statistics highlight the need for more analysis of the risk factors surrounding young offenders.

"They are all violent deaths of one kind or another, which would suggest something about the needs of young people," she said.

"There are risk factors in these children’s lives and there are parallels with the child protection system, but [in the youth justice system] we don’t approach these deaths in respect of risk factors that were missed."

Earlier this year it emerged that a total 132 young offenders died while under supervision in the community since 2006.

A consultation launched by the board on how information can be better reported on serious incidents has now closed, but no detail of the future structure of the system has emerged.

Conservative Conference 2011: Blunt calls for adult prisoners to mentor young offenders

By Lauren Higgs Monday, 03 October 2011

Adult prisoners should be drafted in to mentor young offenders in custody under plans to give prison and probation professionals more freedom to run innovative schemes, the youth justice minister Crispin Blunt has claimed.

Speaking at a Conservative Party Conference event organised by the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, Blunt cited Portland Young Offender Institution (YOI) in Dorset as an example of how professional autonomy can lead to excellent practice.

"I want to give freedom to prison governors to actually get adult prisoners into YOIs, so they can act as mentors and exorcise a moderating influence on the behaviour of young offenders, as they have in Portland," he explained. "The adult prisoners who are being brought in are taking responsibility for the young offenders so it works well for both sides."

"That is a simple example of what happens when professionals have the freedom to make decisions, to try and do things that address the challenges they are facing. The worst thing that could happen would be for us to sit in the centre and to prescribe what we want professionals to do."

Blunt argued that such professional freedom is necessary to complement the expansion of payment-by-results in the field of youth justice.

"We must enfranchise professionals to deliver the different interventions that different individuals require," he said.

"What we want to do, partly through payment-by-results, is to allow professionals to make decisions and give them the freedom and ability to engage with the whole of the private and voluntary sectors as well, in order to construct the right interventions."

Clive Martin, director of Clinks – a national membership body that supports the involvement of voluntary and community organisations in the criminal justice system – claimed that government should offer some guidance to voluntary sector organisations delivering payment-by-results work in the youth justice sector.

"We do know that we can reduce reoffending using measures that restrict personal freedom and probably limit rehabilitation in its wider sense, such as tagging, control orders and those sorts of things," he said.

"So there is a danger that by just adopting the rhetoric of payment-by-results and assuming that it’s good without stating the principles that should underpin it, you could end up with interventions that aren’t exactly where we want to be. We need some principles to guide us."

Young offenders 'set up to fail' when released

Wednesday 14 September 2011
by Adrian Roberts

Prison campaigners the Howard League for Penal Reform urged the government today to scrap failed youth crime policies that lead to "a sense of profound exclusion" from society.

The league hit back at calls for a hard-line response against young offenders raised by right-wing politicians since days of rioting last month.

In a damning report drawn from the experiences of youths themselves it warned that the current system reinforces feelings of detachment that "erode children's hopes of a positive future."

And it said that the current policy of jailing young people then closely monitoring them in the community following their release should be scrapped as it "sets vulnerable children up to fail."

It said children's relationships with their families should instead be supported and they should be shown positive role models.

The league's findings formed part of a five-year project dubbed U R Boss, which aims to give a voice to young people who have spent time in custody.

"In the main, children and young people in the youth justice system come from backgrounds of social and economic disadvantage," it said.

"Their experiences within the system reinforce their perceptions as a 'collective other', furthering their feelings of being disenfranchised and detached from society and eroding their hopes of positive futures."

Howard League chief executive Frances Crook said: "The conditions and restrictions that are imposed when a young person leaves prison serve only to further criminalise young people and exclude them from positive relationships with professionals, their families and their communities.

"The youth justice system has failed - and will continue to do so until it listens to young people and addresses the underlying causes of crime."

But a Ministry of Justice spokesman said custody was only used for the "most serious or persistent" offenders where it was necessary to protect the public.

"Youth offending teams play a key role in assessing young people and work with the courts to tailor sentences according to individual needs.

"This includes supporting parents in local communities to improve their parenting skills."

All young offenders 'should be given looked-after status'

Camilla Pemberton
Friday 24 June 2011

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services has challenged the government to use current sentencing reforms to ensure all young offenders are given looked-after status, not just those on custodial remand.

It follow the news that those young offenders remanded in prison while they await trial are to be given looked-after status as part of sentencing reforms outlined by the government in the Sentencing and Legal Aid Bill.

Andrew Webb, Stockport Council's director of children's services and the ADCS's policy lead on youth justice, said today that the same principle should be applied to all young people in prison, albeit with sufficient funding attached.

"If a young person has been deemed sufficiently needy that they have had their liberty taken away then their ongoing need for support should be acknowledged.

"This should be differentiated from the offence-related support that prison after-care is often reduced to," he added.

However, Webb recognised that local authorities may struggle initially "because this could mean a fairly significant number of new young people who are eligible for services", but said the principle could work "if it is resourced properly".

"These young people, many of whom are already looked-after, should be entitled to support services and leaving-care support. We shouldn't be looking upon this as having a much bigger looked-after population, just that these equally vulnerable young people should have rights to services. As a principle, this is the right thing to do and it is time to have these discussions," he said.

The underlying principles for such reform were set out in the government's sentencing green paper, published in December. The Ministry of Justice is expected to transfer resources to councils so children's services can meet the costs of young people remanded in custody.

Webb pointed out that any savings achieved from reducing the numbers of young people in custody could be used to provide all young offenders with access to leaving care services.

He said not all young offenders would need access to these services in practice, even though all should have the right to them.

He added: "It is still very early days so many questions have not been answered yet. But the ADCS will be arguing that before the Ministry of Justice takes any savings [from these moves], ministers must resource the changes for local authorities."

£5.2m to create positive futures for London’s most vulnerable teenagers

The Big Lottery Fund is investing over £5m to help create more positive futures for London’s young people who are leaving the care system, leaving young offender institutions or who are one of many hidden young carers in the capital.

It is part of an England-wide investment of £30 million announced today by the Big Lottery Fund’s Youth in Focus initiative. The projects have been co-developed and driven by the young people they are designed to help, ensuring that they are recognising and tackling the most pressing problems felt by these groups.

The New Horizon Centre, based in the King’s Cross area is being awarded over £900,000 to run the Creating Positive Futures Programme, which will support young ex-offenders and young people who have left the care system. It will help them with a range of issues that they can face such as housing, education and training needs, mental health and substance misuse.

Jon Snow, Chair of New Horizon Youth Centre, said:“Their Goal: Training, Literacy, independent living, a life beyond care, a life beyond youth offending. Our Goal: To enable positive futures, fulfilling outcomes.New Horizon is proud to lead this endeavour, with the support of the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington and funding from the Big Lottery Fund,which is both ambitious and achieving”.

Ben, a young man who has been helped by New Horizon Youth Centre explains the need for the support: “If it wasn’t for New Horizon I would have ended up in prison. When I started using the centre over a year ago now, I was getting into trouble with the police and out of control. They helped me get on the right track and always supported and encouraged me. I now have a future. I’ve got my own accommodation and they helped me to get onto an apprenticeship programme in football coaching. I’m moving on in my life to better things”.

The Creating Positive Futures Programme will be open seven days a week and will be available to young people in need of support to drop-in or they will be referred to the centre by youth offending or leaving care teams. It will be down to the individual young person and their needs as to how often and for how long they attend.
To read who the successful projects were, click here: http://news.biglotteryfund.org.uk/pr_190511_lon_yif_london_s_most_vulnerable_teenagers?regioncode=-uk&status=theProg&title=%C2%A35.2m

'Muslim offenders less likely to accept help after release'

Mar 21 2011 By Jessica Thompson
Feltham Young Offenders Institute

FELTHAM Young Offenders Institution has reacted to a report from a youth charity which claims young British Muslim ex-offenders are more likely to re-offend.

The Muslim Youth Helpline released a statement on Monday (March 21) saying 48 per cent of young Muslim ex-offenders will not contact services to support them upon leaving prison, making them more likely to re-offend.

Click here to read the full article:

Young offenders trapped in cycle of homelessness and re-offending

Barnardo’s, the children’s charity, has produced a new report, ‘No Fixed Abode’, showing the link between poor accommodation provision and re-offending for young offenders who are falling through the cracks in services, creating a group of young people trapped in cycle of crime.
74% of young offenders end up back in prison within 12 months of release because they lack ongoing support to help them rebuild their lives and readjust to life on the outside. Young offenders in custody are a very vulnerable group of people, with 40% of them having been homeless before their sentence, 20% suffering from depression and 25% struggling with special educational needs. To ensure that they receive the help they need to break the cycle of crime and find the support they need to reach their full potential, it is vital that they have access to services when they near their release.
Click here to read full article: http://daylightcpt.org/downloads/No%20fixed%20abode%20press%20release%20-%201%20march%202011.pdf

Young offenders leaving custody for life of homelessness and reoffending

Children as young as 13 released from custody without a safe place to live, Barnados study finds

Children as young as 13 are being released from custody without a safe place to live, forcing them into a cycle of homelessness and reoffending, research has shown.

Barnardo's has found that thousands of young people leave custody every year and end up sleeping on friends' sofas, sharing bed-and-breakfasts with drug addicts and alcoholics, or being evicted on to the streets.

In 2009-10, youth offender institutions referred 4,147 young people to the charity, all of whom said housing was among their top five concerns.

"Young people who offend are among the most vulnerable in society; a quarter have special educational needs and almost a fifth have depression, yet children as young as 13 are sent back to families who can't cope and end up without a safe place to live," said Anne Marie Carrie, Barnado's chief executive.

Click here to read full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/feb/28/young-offenders-released-homelessness-crime?CMP=twt_fd

Persistent young offenders

17/02/2010

News ways of tackling young offenders ranging from early intervention for low level offending to tough sanctions for serious offenders will be tested in Grampian.

Part of the new approach will use tactics similar to those used to successfully engage with Glasgow gangs. The get tough tactics will involve police identifying those causing the most misery to communities and working with local agencies to offer an alternative to a life of crime. If the young offenders refuse to engage, they will feel the full force of the law.

It will also see local agencies engage with young offenders who are starting on a path to more serious crimes.

Click here for full article: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2010/02/17103357