Charity urges police to use pre-court diversion schemes to reduce youth offending
Joe Lepper
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Police forces in England are being urged to use pre-court diversion schemes to reduce rates of re-offending among young people.
The schemes may involve interventions such as counselling and help finding work or have a focus on restorative justice and can reduce reoffending rates by 13 per cent, according to research by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF).
But despite these promising results the schemes are not widely used by police.
Just one in 10 teenagers who had committed a violent crime say they were offered support or training to prevent them re-offending, YEF found.
In addition, the use of diversion schemes is based on “variations in local funding” and whether police and youth justice workers locally have access to latest research around the benefits.
The charity wants to see police treat the arrest of every child “as a safeguarding opportunity” to highlight whether they are being exploited or are vulnerable and support needs to be put in place.
The charity wants all children who are arrested to be able to access therapy when they need it.
Better data collection of how many children receive support after they have been arrested is also needed to help shape local provision.
When young people are referred the delivery of schemes can be slow, YEF warns, due to “unclear referral pathways and the complexities of different agencies working together”.
A four-week target of ensuring arrested children are referred to a scheme should be put in place, says the charity.
It also wants to see partnership working improve, so that youth justice staff and police are “confident on which approaches are most likely to help a child stay safe”.
We have outlined SEVEN recommendations to improve support for children who are arrested and will work with key partners and invest our own funding to support these changes. Learn more in the thread ⏬
— Youth Endowment Fund (@YouthEndowFund) December 11, 2023
Download full report: https://t.co/o5J3myDxg2 pic.twitter.com/7NUsZYumTL
System changes are also needed. The charity also wants to see funding for youth justice services revamped to ensure that diversionary work to reduce re-offending is properly reflected in allocations.
YEF also wants to see pre-court diversion schemes incentivised to ensure use with children is recorded as a positive outcome within local police figures.
“Evidence shows that supporting children when they are arrested - and are at a critical moment in their life - reduces offending,” said YEF executive director Jon Yates.
“Pre-court diversion is not about being ‘soft on crime’, it’s about being ‘smart on crime’. If there are interventions that have been shown to improve the life chances of children, make our communities safer and reduce the burden on the public purse, it’s in everyone’s best interests to follow the evidence.”
Meanwhile, the YEF has collaborated with the National Children’s Bureau to review the use of diversion schemes.
📢 New research paper out 📢
— National Children's Bureau (@ncbtweets) December 11, 2023
On behalf of @YouthEndowFund we’ve reviewed research on youth diversion schemes across England & Wales, how effective they are and how they can be improved.
Read the report here 👉 https://t.co/OKwhaTntql pic.twitter.com/YBrWaEzia9
Among schemes looked at is the Kent Youth Drug Intervention Scheme which looks to divert young people away from crime and offer alternative education opportunities to those caught in possession of Class B or C drugs for the first time and with no prior history of drug use.
According to police records more than four in five young people who finished the programme did not commit another offence within the next year.
