Custody spending to be slashed by Youth Justice Board
Joe Lepper
Thursday, May 22, 2014
The Youth Justice Board (YJB) is to slash funding for youth custody by £56m this year but has pledged to protect community and youth offending team (YOT) budgets.
In its business plan for 2014/15 the YJB says it will be operating on a budget of just £255m compared to £310m in 2013/14.
The savings are to be made through cutting youth custody spending from £197m in 2013/14 to £141m in 2014/15.
To focus on keeping reoffending rates down the YJB has pledged to keep its spending on YOTs at 2013/14’s level of £92m.
In addition, the YJB has boosted spending on community programmes by £1m to £8m, although this is still a fifth less than was spent in this area in 2010/11.
If achieved, the savings will mean the YJB will be operating on £179m less than in 2010/11 when its budget was £434m.
Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, has welcomed the shift of resources from custody to community work and avoiding further cuts to YOT budgets.
She said: “YJB plans to rebalance funding from custody back into services in the community are a good indication of its determination to drive child prison numbers down to an unavoidable minimum.
??"Youth crime doesn’t come from nowhere: most young offenders have histories of neglect, experience of local authority care, high prevalence of mental health need, addictions or learning disabilities or difficulties. The solutions lie outside prison walls in health, education, family support and children’s services.
“Ensuring that youth offending teams have the necessary resources to work effectively across these agencies is vital if we want children to lead healthy, rather than blighted, lives."
Other priorities in the YJB business plan for this year include ensuring young people are placed in the most appropriate setting and improving advice and support to youth justice professionals.
Improvements to the secure estate being planned include better support for young people in custody who have been sexually abused or display sexually harmful behaviour.
Responsibility for healthcare commissioning in secure training centres is also being taken over by NHS England.
YJB chief executive Lin Hinnigan said: “Our priorities for the coming year will focus on continuing to reduce reoffending and working with the government to deliver reforms to youth custody and resettlement and improve cost-effectiveness.”