Report of Advisory Group on Youth Crime

SECTION 3: WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE?

8. We identified a number of significant barriers to be removed if better co-ordinated and more effective services are to be developed. These are essentially about societal and professional attitude, about systems and about resources.

Societal and professional attitude

9. The roots of much offending behaviour lie in families and communities but persistent young offenders are often alienated and excluded from both by their behaviour. That has to change. The willingness of families and communities to accept responsibility for the problems of their own young people holds out one of the best prospects of reclaiming wasted lives. Families and communities need to be better informed about the factors which contribute to youth crime and better supported to prevent and deal with it. Early intervention programmes delivered jointly through social work, health, housing and education can help here as can the wide range of social inclusion and community initiatives, including the Communities that care projects.

10. Also relevant are the attitudes of those directly involved in dealing with persistent young offenders. A step change in the range and nature of programmes and interventions will have major implications for training for all practitioners, including police, Reporters, procurators fiscal, panel members and sentencers.

Systems

11. One of the widespread criticisms of the current arrangements for dealing with young offenders is that the transition between the Hearings system and the criminal justice system is too abrupt. In fact, a number of contradictions and issues are evident from an examination of this transition. These apply to the capacity of both systems to deal effectively with the young offender:

• The criminal justice system is described as too focused on adults and unable to deal with the particular aspects of youth offending
• The Children's Hearings system is described as too focussed on welfare issues and unable to address the particular aspects of youth offending.

There needs to be a better balance between the welfare and justice models.

12. There is a real and perceived contradiction between the approach adopted in the two systems to the young person:

• The Children's Hearing tends to focus on the offending behaviour as one aspect of the life circumstances of the young person
• The criminal justice system tends to focus on the offending behaviour - the crime - although life circumstances do play a part in sentencing decisions.

13. The 'whole person' approach is however no less valid for the 16 or 17 year old offender than it is for the 15 year old. Research on persistent young offenders has consistently emphasised the disproportionate extent of the problems they face in relation to alcohol and drug abuse, family dislocation, having been victims of crime, limited educational experience and health problems - evidenced by experiences of residential care, school exclusion and referrals to the Children's Hearings on non-offence grounds.

14. This suggests that there needs to be a unified approach at a practical level, combining care and protection with the public's concerns over the need to address offending behaviour.

Resources

15. There is undoubtedly scope for better use of the resources currently devoted to persistent young offenders by local government, health, the criminal justice system and the voluntary sector. More joint working and pooling of expertise and resources - including between children and families' teams and criminal justice teams - would make a real difference. But to secure the step change, particularly in programmes and interventions which we are recommending, will need additional resources. Section 5 considers this in more detail.