The East Sussex council said the dramatic fall in local 10- to 17-year-olds entering the youth justice system was down to an increased use by youth offending teams of alternatives to custody for dealing with offending behaviour.
In 2012/13, 69 young people in the authority entered the criminal justice system, compared with 95 in 2011/12.
Instead of reprimands and final warnings being used against young offenders – many of which when broken lead to a term in custody – police and youth crime prevention teams have embraced the use of restorative justice to support young people and divert offending behaviour before it escalates further.
In addition to restorative justice, the council last month launched a Youth Early Help pathway to help youth services identify young people with behaviour problems at an earlier stage.
It expects the pathway to enable support services to be put into place earlier to address the underlying issues for a young person's behaviour problems, so that this is prevented from escalating further.
The council also reported that crime against young people under 18 living in the city is down for the second year running.
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