Youth offending levels on the slide

Radical reforms to prioritise education in youth custody are under way. But aside from the impending changes, comprehen­sive statistics on the youth justice system in England and Wales published last month paint a mixed picture of progress to improve the lives of young offenders.

The number of first-time entrants to the youth justice system, and custody levels, have fallen. But reoffending rates are rising.

The 20 per cent drop in first-time offences committed by 10- to 17-year-olds, from 45,910 in 2010/11 to 36,677 in 2011/12, has been universally welcomed.

But John Drew, chief executive of the Youth Justice Board, says the fall comes with unintended consequences, most notably a rise in reoffending. The figures show that 35.8 per cent of all young offenders reoffended within a year, rising to 72.6 per cent among those released from custody.

More complex needs
Drew points to the fact that an increasing number of young offenders now have more complex needs, because children with less entrenched issues have been taken out of the system.

“The continued reduction in first-time entrants means that the youth justice system is cooling off, and this feeds its way through to reductions in the use of custody,” he says. “The system is becoming concentrated on relatively smaller numbers of young people whose behaviour is seriously problematic, with custody increasingly being used as a last resort.

“The reoffending rate rise is a result of fewer children in the system, with those children representing a more serious challenge in terms of turning their behaviour around.”

Elsewhere, the use of remand remained stubbornly high in 2011/12 – with just four per cent fewer remand episodes than the previous year, equating to 31,716 in 2011/12, compared with 33,133 in 2010/11.

Given the drop in the number of young people in the system, this means that 51 per cent of all remand decisions led to a remand episode in 2011/12, compared with 47 per cent in 2010/11.

But Drew insists that more up-to-date YJB figures on the use of remand, which are yet to be published, show progress is being made, as local authorities prepare to take responsibility for remand costs from April this year.

Tim Bateman, criminologist at the University of Bedfordshire, says the reduced number of first-time entrants and custody levels in the system masks another issue that the YJB must address. Falls in both categories, for black and ethnic minority young people have not been as steep as for their white counterparts.

“As we have a reduction in the number of young people coming into the system, the over­representation of ethnic minorities is increasing, which is a serious concern,” he says. “Why the fall isn’t so pronounced for certain groups should be a priority to get to grips with.”

Bateman also believes attention should be paid to some of the more stubborn offence categories.

The number of young offenders entering the system for the first time for offences relating to categories including violence against the person, burglary, theft, criminal damage and drug offences, has also fallen.

However, the number of new entrants for robbery has risen significantly and new entrants for sexual offences have remained relatively steady at between 600 and 700 a year since 2001/02.

“Given that robbery can be one of the more serious offences, it would be good to see that falling at the same rate as other offence types,” Bateman says.

Positive picture
Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, says the figures paint a generally positive picture. But he has concerns about the rising use of restraint in the youth secure estate, which increased by 17 per cent in 2011/12, from 7,191 to 8,419 incidents.

He also fears that the decline in children getting in trouble with the law could soon begin to be reversed by the austerity measures of recent years. He says factors such as a parent losing a job and the impact of benefit cuts could be a trigger for offending behaviour for those children who are entering adolescence.

“Recession and depression can be harmful in all sorts of ways,” he says. “Self-esteem can take a battering and mental health problems can increase. People get angry and can take that anger out on children and young people in their household.

“If you are growing up in a community that is particularly affected, your sense of what you can achieve in life is going to be different to others.”

Download the Youth Justice Statistics 2011/12 table