Study identifies what works best in cutting youth reoffending
Jess Brown
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Why building strong relationships between youth offending team staff and young offenders is critical in preventing young people from committing further crimes.
HM Inspectorate of Probation recently assessed the abilities of six youth offending teams (YOTs) to support young people to stop reoffending.
The YOTs were judged on their desistance work including their ability to build effective relationships with, and create community participation opportunities for, young people, and manage wider social contexts, including young people's family and peers.
Between January and April 2015, researchers interviewed a group of former service users who had been subject to youth rehabilitation orders or custody and not reoffended for at least 12 months, as well as current service users subject to referral orders or custody who had reoffended within 12 months.
They found that good work was being done around building effective relationships although there was evidence of a lack of knowledge and training on desistance theory.
Youth reoffending rates have been rising since 2010 (see box) and the report recommends that the Youth Justice Board (YJB) review YOT practice guidance so that it gives greater priority to desistance training.
Researchers found that the main barriers to improving desistance were young people having poor relationships with, and frequent changes of, case managers, being labelled as offenders and not having their views listened to, and being put on behaviour programmes that did not meet their individual needs.
Personalised interventions
The report also recommends that opportunities are developed for young people to participate in community activities, and interventions are personalised.
Graham Smyth, senior lecturer in criminology at the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies, delivers desistance workshops to YOTs across Greater Manchester. He says the report findings "turns on its head" how YOTs are expected to work.
"YOTs can start to look at people's strengths and not just see them as an aggregation of risks, and try to work constructively towards shared goals where you get more buy-in from the offender on what is a positive direction for them," he says.
Sean Creany, trustee at the National Association for Youth Justice and adviser for social justice charity Peer Power, welcomes the report's focus on quality relationships, and says young people need to be listened to.
"There must be a greater focus on involving children in assessment and decision-making. Children need a stronger voice in the justice system. All work should be decided with them," he says.
However, he acknowledges none of the report's recommendations can be put in place without systemic changes, and one barrier is that YOTs' performance is measured on the prevention of offending. He says practitioners have become "bogged down" by bureaucracy with too much focus placed on meeting performance targets.
"If what is suggested in the report is going to work, the purpose of the youth justice system as being the prevention of offending should be adapted to also incorporate relationships, education and healthy development," Creany says.
"In such an audit-driven context, some staff experience difficulties working with children's diverse circumstances and building a trusting, caring relationship."
Creany adds that the research found case managers sometimes felt pressure from their managers to concentrate on delivering "offence-focused interventions that they could evidence", rather than focus on building relationships with young people.
"Practitioners need not be afraid to emphasise the importance of warmth and a caring attitude, and move beyond technical, disengaging, rigid and target-driven practices," he says.
In addition, the report found that young people were demotivated by repeatedly being put on the same programmes, many of which did not reflect their needs.
Creany says it is crucial that there is not a "one-size-fits-all" approach, but one tailored to the individual.
Building relationships
Penelope Gibbs, chair of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, says there needs to be "a slight cultural shift" with greater recognition given to the importance of relationships in training for professionals.
But Creany says building these relationships can be difficult.
"It really does take time to build a relationship with a young person, and high turnover of staff in some YOTs can create problems."
Smyth says YOTs are well placed to deal with the report's recommendations, but they do have restrictions on their workload - only last month, the YJB cut the YOT grant by £9m in 2016/17 after a similar figure was cut last year.
"Resources have shrunk a lot in recent years," he says. "They need the resources and time to be able to spend with young people.
"But the kind of YOT model where you have a partnership, you have people within those teams who are able to come at young people's problems - such as health, substance misuse and education - from a variety of directions. It still does give the right combination of skills to bear on those problems."
She adds that it is also important to pay attention to factors outside the criminal justice system that can help reoffending rates among young people.
"The report says that one of the things children appreciated was getting practical help for things like housing. One of the most important things for the system to accommodate is that solutions lie outside of the criminal just system."
Gibbs says it is important for workers to be trained in what works to reduce desistance.
"The fundamental principles of what works best, in terms of helping desistance from crime, needs to be researched and everybody trained in them before they get into YOTs," she adds.
The report highlighted that promoting a positive identity and self-worth was effective in reducing reoffending rates.
Sally Benton, head of policy and public affairs at charity Nacro, says it is important to understand that in order for young people to move on from crime, a "personal shift in identity" is required.
She adds: "In order to bring about positive change, all those working in youth justice services should be focused on facilitating this identity shift."
Inside view: Targetted approach to tackling reoffending is paying dividends, but only more joined-up work between custody and community settings will ensure young people go on to lead crime-free lives
By Lin Hinnigan, chief executive, Youth Justice Board
The fact that the reoffending rate among young people is gradually increasing presents an ongoing challenge to the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and the youth justice sector as a whole.
Tackling reoffending is one of our main priorities. There is no doubt that the simple headline measure, the "binary" reoffending rate, remains high, but this is because we are dealing with a radically reduced number of young people in the youth justice system, with a heavier concentration of complex needs.
In this context, the figures represent a story of success - where the number of reoffenders has so drastically reduced overall, that those who do remain in the youth justice system are more likely to reoffend. In addressing this issue, it is important we understand what has been achieved to date, how this effects both overall numbers of offenders and the rate of offending, and what we still need to do to improve performance.
Over the past decade, multi-agency youth justice partners have delivered a number of significant achievements, massively reducing the number of children and young people in the youth justice system. It is, by any measure, a remarkable success that has been achieved using a holistic approach to address the needs of each young person involved in or on the cusp of criminal activity.
It is a testament to the excellent work done by youth offending teams (YOTs) and multi-agency youth justice partners, who are too often unsung heroes in this very challenging field of work.
There is no doubt that there are now proportionately more young offenders with persistent, entrenched offending behaviour in the youth justice system. As a result, those who offend are more likely on average to reoffend than those who were in the youth justice system 11 years ago.
So, while the number of young people offending, and the number of offences committed, has fallen starkly, the reoffending rate has not. Exploring this further helps us get a better understanding of the young people we are now working with. We know these young people are among the most troubled children in our society, with complex needs and highly challenging behaviour. Many have experienced neglect, trauma or abuse in their own lives and require a greater level of support and intervention to effectively address their needs and help them turn their lives around. They are more likely than their peers to have a mental health issue and to be excluded from school.
We know that domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, intergenerational unemployment, or a parent or sibling already in the criminal justice system are all factors correlated with offending and reoffending behaviour among young people. We also know that looked-after children and those leaving care reoffend at more than twice the rate of those who have never been looked after.
With a deeper understanding of the challenges we now face, how is the sector tackling reoffending? In 2013/14, the YJB began a reoffending programme aimed at supporting YOTs to understand their cohorts better and develop ways to improve performance on this measure.
Our Reducing Reoffending Toolkit is now being used by 70 YOT partnerships to provide a detailed breakdown and analysis of reoffending and to target resources more effectively - and we believe it is this kind of targeted and individualised support that delivers results. Examples include:
Southend YOT - whose toolkit analysis identified high rates of reoffending by young people leaving custody - restructured its resources to establish a group of staff who would directly target the risks associated with leaving custody and engage young people in structured activities.
Portsmouth YOT used the toolkit to confirm the reoffending rate was much higher for looked-after children in their area. The information was then used to identify common risk factors and develop an action plan to reduce offending by this group.
Wakefield YOT partnership has prioritised its work to reduce reoffending, and has a dedicated analyst in place to support this.
These examples demonstrate the tailored approach that we believe can make a real difference. But we've also identified that a critical success factor is to fully implement and embed the measures that are identified at a local level.
However, addressing reoffending must go further than the work done in the community by YOTs. System-wide reform is required if we are to truly tackle this issue. Dedicated work by YOTs needs to be followed through and enhanced if a young person goes into custody.
The YJB believes very strongly that the custodial system for children and young people should be provided by highly skilled and specialist staff, operating in smaller units across the regions, where a more therapeutic approach is taken to the care provided. It is for this reason that we have supported the direction outlined in the interim report on the future of youth justice services by Charlie Taylor.
If we can transform the way custody is provided and develop a more joined-up approach across custody and community settings in order to develop cohesive plans to address individual, complex needs, then we will stand a much better chance of helping young people to go on to lead safe and crime-free lives and make a positive contribution to society.
900 Number of young pºeople in custody, down from 3,000 on 2006/07
38% Rate of youth reoffending in 2013/14, up from 33% in 2009/10
Source: The proportion of young people reoffending after conviction; Government statistics
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