Schemes such as that offered by the No Way Trust are based on the floored premise that people, in this case young people, can be frightened out of future behaviours. There is no evidence that this works. And certainly the No Way Trust produce no evidence from their study. Taking thousands of young people who will probably never get into trouble to visit courts and prisons and then to credit the scheme with deterring those young from not going to court and prison in the future is a nonsense. If exposure to court and prison had a deterrent effect why are there so many young people in custody and appearing in court? An experience that is memorable is just that - no doubt the young people found the experience interesting and informative - just like a vist to the Natural History Musuem. But to give this approach credence (and sunstantial funding) in the efforts to stop children and young people becoming involved in the youth jsutice system is misguided.

Steve Waters

I echo Steve Water's comments. The impact of the events should have seen fewer than 23% "involved in situations where they could have become involved in crime since the CSAD took place". The last national survey I am aware of was that arounjd 21% of young people reported being in such situations. This report shows how hard it continues to be to introduce effective evidence based interventions. Sometimes ineffective ones need to be stopped, and there is a huge cost to keen staff involved that needs to be managed.

Steve has got it all wrong. The Now Way Trust does not frighten young people out of committing crime - that approach doesn't work instead looking at the type of situations that young people can get involved in. The fact that 23% of young people questioned have not got involved in crime is to be greeted with praise and not condemnation. We need to invest in all of our young people, not just concentrating on the hard core who are sent into custody every year. Too many people are locked up in our prisons, we need to do something about it and the best way to do it is to start with our future!! Every person is only 2 seconds away from ending up in trouble with the law and its ultimate sanction of custody. Dont forget that.

The No Way Trust methodology has to be cahracterised as a 'scared straight' process which shows no evidence of effectiveness, as Mick acknowledges. Doing 'nothing' shows that 21% of all children report being involved in something that might be criminal (IPSOS MORI 2007). My point is how to stop such programmes and deliver something more effective.