Conservative Conference 2011: Blunt calls for adult prisoners to mentor young offenders
Lauren Higgs
Monday, October 3, 2011
Adult prisoners should be drafted in to mentor young offenders in custody under plans to give prison and probation professionals more freedom to run innovative schemes, the youth justice minister Crispin Blunt has claimed.
Speaking at a Conservative Party Conference event organised by the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, Blunt cited Portland Young Offender Institution (YOI) in Dorset as an example of how professional autonomy can lead to excellent practice.
"I want to give freedom to prison governors to actually get adult prisoners into YOIs, so they can act as mentors and exercise a moderating influence on the behaviour of young offenders, as they have in Portland," he explained. "The adult prisoners who are being brought in are taking responsibility for the young offenders so it works well for both sides."
"That is a simple example of what happens when professionals have the freedom to make decisions, to try and do things that address the challenges they are facing. The worst thing that could happen would be for us to sit in the centre and to prescribe what we want professionals to do."
Blunt argued that such professional freedom is necessary to complement the expansion of payment-by-results in the field of youth justice.
"We must enfranchise professionals to deliver the different interventions that different individuals require," he said.
"What we want to do, partly through payment-by-results, is to allow professionals to make decisions and give them the freedom and ability to engage with the whole of the private and voluntary sectors as well, in order to construct the right interventions."
Clive Martin, director of Clinks – a national membership body that supports the involvement of voluntary and community organisations in the criminal justice system – claimed that government should offer some guidance to voluntary sector organisations delivering payment-by-results work in the youth justice sector.
"We do know that we can reduce reoffending using measures that restrict personal freedom and probably limit rehabilitation in its wider sense, such as tagging, control orders and those sorts of things," he said.
"So there is a danger that by just adopting the rhetoric of payment-by-results and assuming that it’s good without stating the principles that should underpin it, you could end up with interventions that aren’t exactly where we want to be. We need some principles to guide us."
"I want to give freedom to prison governors to actually get adult prisoners into YOIs, so they can act as mentors and exercise a moderating influence on the behaviour of young offenders, as they have in Portland," he explained. "The adult prisoners who are being brought in are taking responsibility for the young offenders so it works well for both sides."
"That is a simple example of what happens when professionals have the freedom to make decisions, to try and do things that address the challenges they are facing. The worst thing that could happen would be for us to sit in the centre and to prescribe what we want professionals to do."
Blunt argued that such professional freedom is necessary to complement the expansion of payment-by-results in the field of youth justice.
"We must enfranchise professionals to deliver the different interventions that different individuals require," he said.
"What we want to do, partly through payment-by-results, is to allow professionals to make decisions and give them the freedom and ability to engage with the whole of the private and voluntary sectors as well, in order to construct the right interventions."
Clive Martin, director of Clinks – a national membership body that supports the involvement of voluntary and community organisations in the criminal justice system – claimed that government should offer some guidance to voluntary sector organisations delivering payment-by-results work in the youth justice sector.
"We do know that we can reduce reoffending using measures that restrict personal freedom and probably limit rehabilitation in its wider sense, such as tagging, control orders and those sorts of things," he said.
"So there is a danger that by just adopting the rhetoric of payment-by-results and assuming that it’s good without stating the principles that should underpin it, you could end up with interventions that aren’t exactly where we want to be. We need some principles to guide us."
