Happy Birthday YJB

Today is the 10th birthday of the Youth Justice Board, the body Tony Blair created to sort out the problem of children who commit crime in England and Wales.

New Labour believed society had become far too soft with young troublemakers, simply cautioning them over and over again and not dealing with the problem. As the then Home Secretary Jack Straw put it: "No More Excuses".

However, Plan B does not seem to have been a brilliant success either. Spending has rocketed to £648.5m last year.

And yet most people think youth crime has got a lot worse and the rise in gang culture in some parts of our inner cities dominates the media.

Lack of data makes it difficult to know quite what is happening to youth crime rates, but a recent assessment of Labour's Youth Justice policies by academics at King's College (pdf, 341KB) put it this way:

"Despite the huge investment, self-reported youth offending has not declined and the principal aim of the youth justice system set out in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, 'to prevent offending by children and young persons', has yet to be achieved in any significant sense."
"Ten years of Labour's youth justice reforms: an independent audit"
Enver Solomon and Richard Garside

More than three thousand children are behind bars and razor wire in England and Wales today - more under 18-year-olds proportionally than any other country in Europe with the exception of Ukraine.

It is an expensive business. Each place costs on average £100,000 a year. £280m in total last year - over ten times what was spent on preventing youth crime. And there muse be real doubts as to the effectiveness of custody. 73% of those incarcerated are reconvicted within a year of leaving custody.

Last year there was a 3% rise in reoffending rates among those given custodial sentences. And a 13% rise in the proportion who went on to commit an even more serious crime on release.

The use of ASBOs and other court orders has also helped push up the numbers of young people who enter the justice system each year - criminalising behaviour that in the past might have been regarded as mischief. In 2006-7, 93,730 children entered the youth justice system for the first time.

A new survey published today by the Prison Reform Trust (pdf, 278KB) suggests the public are far from convinced we have got our tactics right.

For instance, the poll asked:

If a young drug addict is caught for a non-violent crime such as shoplifting, which of the following do you think would be the most effective in reducing the likelihood of them committing further crimes?

• Compulsory work in the community along with drug treatment
• Sentenced to a short prison term
• A fine to be paid within the next 28 days
• Other
• Nothing - no punishment should be imposed

The overwhelming majority, over eight out of ten (84%) thought that compulsory work along with drug rehabilitation treatment would be effective.

Just one in ten (11%) thought that prison would work to cut non-violent crime.

Two in three people thought prisons were 'universities of crime' with only one in ten people think prison turns young offenders into law abiding citizens.

The government accepts that the number of children in custody is too high and the Youth Justice Board has a target to reduce it. But, again, the audit of the government's policies paints a sombre picture:

"Despite regular commitments made by the YJB to reduce the number of children sentenced to custody, the latest targets have not been met. In fact, at present,
performance is deteriorating, with numbers increasing by 8% since March 2003 against a target of a 10% reduction."
"Ten years of Labour's youth justice reforms: an independent audit"
Enver Solomon and Richard Garside

To my mind, the Youth Justice Board has done a huge amount to improve the way youth justice is managed and delivered. But it must be a matter of some disquiet that this afternoon there will be the usual frantic attempt at YJB headquarters to find enough beds for all the children the courts have ordered be locked up.

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