Justice minister undecided on the role of youth offending teams

Despite speculation that youth offending teams could take on a mainly commissioning role and that more frontline roles would be handed over to the voluntary sector and private providers, Blunt said no decisions had been made.
 
He said that there were "further opportunities for stakeholders to shape this autumn’s green paper" into justice reforms. He added: "I’m not in a position to say what the systemic answer will be regarding youth offending teams, that’s why we are in the process now of examining all the options."
 
He added that the Ministry of Justice was looking both inside the UK and abroad to find effective ways of reducing youth offending. "One has to look on the basis of evidence of what has worked in the UK and also abroad. All over the place there are examples of good practice," he said.
 
But he did say that he had been impressed with some aspects of the way youth offending teams work: "Some of the strength’s of the current youth justice system, particularly how youth offending teams operate, is that they actually have considerably better and more effective multi-agency working than in the adult justice system.

"You have local authorities, health trusts and the police properly engaged with youth offending teams. It may be that some of the success that is being seen – in terms of the numbers of young offenders being sent to custody – maybe has something to do with that joined-up approach."