Perverse consequences of youth justice offensive

Offending by girls is up, offences committed by boys down, and youth justice teams failed to meet any of their targets to cut reoffending rates for youngsters, new statistics show.

Meanwhile, a study by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London shows that despite substantial investment in restructuring and expanding the youth justice system, success has been mixed. Since 2000-01 spending on youth justice has increased in real terms by 45%. However, the report says, all the expenditure and activity to reduce youth crime has had no measurable impact and nearly all the targets set, relating to youth offenders’ accommodation, education, training, employment, substance misuse and mental health, have not been met.

Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and the report’s co-author says: “The government’s decadelong youth justice experiment was a bold attempt to deploy the full force of the youth justice system to tackle problematic and disruptive behaviour by young people. This new research suggests that the experiment has largely failed, if reported youth offending is the measure of success.”

Youth Justice Board (YJB) figures show that the number of offences committed by youngsters has risen in the last three years to almost 300,000. Boys remain the biggest offenders, but crimes committed by girls aged between 10 and 17 have risen by 25% in three years, with violent attacks up 50%.

Rod Morgan, former chairman of the YJB, says: “The evidence suggests this has more to do with the key agencies’ changing response to offending by girls than a surge in their offending behaviour, though surveys indicate that young girls’ abuse of alcohol is beginning to match that of boys.”

Morgan points out that compared to the preceding three years, the number of children and young cases criminalised in 2006-07 increased only slightly (+2%) and most of the additional disposals were pre-court (+2%) and community-based (+8%) rather than custodial (level).

He says: “This suggests that the perverse consequences of the government’s Offences Brought to Justice (OBTJ) target, which greatly increased the number of children and young people entering the criminal justice system in the period 2002-05—it was my contention that police were picking low-hanging fruit—has generally been recognised and is increasingly being resisted. “