National children’s charity 4Children, in partnership with Barnardo’s, is today launching a new policy pamphlet, Unlocking Potential: Alternatives to Custody for Young People, to highlight the controversial rise in numbers of young people being placed in custody and the need for more effective alternatives. With the Youth Action Crime Plan imminent, leading children’s charities are calling for a radical new approach involving setting up community justice centres to deliver intensive one-to-one working with young offenders and their families, and local community sentences to reduce youth offending.

The report highlights how despite locking up more children and young people than any other Western European Nation, the UK system is failing against critical tests of reducing reoffending and dealing with the causes of offending. The number of under-18s in custody has more than doubled since 1989. Equally worryingly is the fact that over 80% of boys under age 18 released from prison are reconvicted within two years, and even more reoffend.

Unlocking Potential: Alternatives to Custody for Young People highlights the stark reality that children in the youth justice system come from society’s most disadvantaged families and communities and promotes solutions which address their complex needs and often chaotic lives.

Recommendations within the report include calls for increased incentives for local authorities to engage with alternatives to custody such as intensive fostering, a system of support which early pilots have proven to be highly successful, and reviewing the threshold for youth custodial sentences.

Core recommendations of Unlocking Potential: Alternatives to Custody for Young People include:

1. New community justice centres to dispense community based sentences in areas of high levels of offending.
2. A review of the thresholds for imposing custodial sentences on children and young people under 18, including consideration of statutory regulations to ensure that custody can only be used as a last resort for those children who have committed serious, violent or sexual offences.
3. The legal proscription on children getting only one reprimand or final warning should be removed, alongside the creation of more pre-court diversionary activities.
4. Changes to the Offences Bought to Justice targets so that the targets reflect detection of more serious crime and crime committed by adults and the introduction of informal actions, such as reparation or restoration counting towards the OBJ targets.
5. All Government agencies – from those working with housing, those combating drug and alcohol addiction and targeted social services – should develop programmes tailored to the needs of children and young people who offend. Training should also be provided for local voluntary sector agencies working with young people and engaged with the criminal justice system.
6. There should be an examination of methods which would remove the financial disincentive for local authorities to provide alternatives to remands such as bail support and remand fostering.

Unlocking Potential: Alternatives to Custody for Young People also outlines the cost benefits to the taxpayer of exploring alternatives to youth custody. In 2006/07 a total of £3,832,028 was spent on locking up children and young people under the age of 18. Information from ‘The Economic Case For and Against Prison’, in relation to interventions for juveniles, showed that the average cost of a community-based intervention was around £45,000 – a saving of £8,000 against the least expensive form of custody.

Anne Longfield OBE, Chief Executive of 4Children, said:
“Most young people in custody have already experienced fractured and chaotic lives. Evidence shows that the impact of isolating them from their families and community is disastrous for the individual, their families and the rest of society. A positive case needs to be made for tackling youth offending which revolves around working with young people and their families in a more supportive environment within the community. This is not a soft option. The complex needs of young offenders must be reflected in integrated solutions which support young people in taking responsibility for their actions and help them to reintegrate back into society.”

Martin Narey, Chief Executive of Barnardo’s, said:
“It is right for us to be concerned about the shocking tragedies of the deaths of young people recently. Because of them, and the understandable media outrage, we could be forgiven for thinking that our young people are all out of control and committing ever more violent crimes.

“We have to make a distinction between the minority of very dangerous young people who need to be incarcerated for long periods and the much larger number of young people who are not dangerous, have not committed grave crimes, but whom we lock up in record numbers and in circumstances where any sort of rehabilitation is extremely unlikely. This report highlights the need for there to be a better response to offending by children; one which requires young people to take responsibility for their offending, but which offers better prospects of helping them to quit offending.”

Click here to download Unlocking Potential: Alternatives to Custody for Young People.

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Notes to the Editor

For further information, please contact Julie Watkins on 020 7522 6928 / Julie.Watkins@4Children.org.uk.

• Around half of children in the youth justice system have been in care and a significant number will have been involved with social services in some other way
• 40% of males and two thirds of females sentenced in court have mental health symptoms
• 23% of young offenders hadn’t seen a GP in the two years to August 2002
• The majority of children in custody have been out of school for long periods. In one poll conducted by the Inspectorate of Prisons, 75% of children at Feltham had been permanently excluded from school.
• In 1992 only 100 children aged 12, 13 and 14 were sentenced to custody; in 2006/07 this figure had risen to 844. Shockingly, this increase does not correspond to serious youth crime levels. In 2006 the Youth Justice Board Chair reported that twice as many children are now locked up over the course of the last decade, despite the steady decrease in youth crime up until 2005, and while the last two years has seen a slight rise, this has been related to specific types of offences.

4Children is the national charity dedicated to creating opportunities and building futures for all children. It aspires to ensure that all children, young people and families have access to a creative, safe and child focused environment, and activities. 4Children provides an information line for parents and childcare professionals with advice and support on all aspects of childcare, including details of out of school clubs in your area. For more information see: www.4Children.org.uk.

Barnardo’s works with approximately 115,000 children, young people and their families in more than 394 specialised projects in local communities across the UK. This includes work with children affected by today’s most urgent issues: poverty, homelessness, disability, bereavement and abuse. For more information about Barnardo’s visit our website at www.barnardos.org.uk. We believe in the potential in every child and young person, no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through. We will support them, stand up for them and bring out the best in each and every child.

Louise Casey, former head of Tony Blair’s Respect taskforce, has called for a raft of changes and initiatives in her report, Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime, to the Government. The report recommends that targets should be based on public perceptions of crime reduction. Casey calls for the Home Office to stop producing national crime statistics, and for the task to be handed over to an independent organisation.

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