Editorial: Resettlement support will curb reoffending
Ravi Chandiramani
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
An alarmingly high proportion of young offenders - around 80 per cent - go on to reoffend upon release from custody.
Their transition to the outside world is often harsh. Stories of young people leaving prison and being dropped off at a train station with just a travel warrant are not rare.
The government will attempt to break this vicious cycle of reoffending when it publishes a green paper later in the year looking at how to improve post-justice continuity of care. Our feature on the resettlement of young offenders this week asks practitioners and young people what this green paper should contain (see p22).
The ingredients needed to successfully rehabilitate young offenders are beyond doubt: structured activity that spurs motivation; education that leads to employment; access to a bank account; and a roof over their heads. Given the sky-high reoffending rates and pending government intervention, it's clear these needs aren't being met.
The costs are high. Charity Rainer has estima-ted that better resettlement services for 15- to 17-year-olds on detention and training orders could save £80m a year in emergency accommodation costs, the cost of further crimes they might commit and the associated custody expense. Rainer was behind Reset, a two-year pilot scheme to provide young offenders with a resettlement support worker for nine months after their release.
It might offend more authoritarian sensibilities but, if we are to drive down youth reoffending rates, services for ex-offenders need to more closely reflect those of care leavers. Children's services departments already have a duty under Section 20 of the 1989 Children Act to give 16- and 17-year-olds at risk of homelessness a child in need assessment - and that includes young offenders leaving custody.
Many young offenders' lives are governed by chaos and deprivation. Characteristics typical of criminal behaviour include being in care, unemployment and problems with drugs and alcohol, domestic violence and mental health. The green paper needs to pave the way for statutory resettlement workers who can start planning from the point of sentence. They will be essential in knitting together all the various agencies and bringing order and hope amid the chaos and turmoil of life after jail. And that would diminish the impulse to offend again and again.
- Ravi Chandiramani, editor, Children & Young People Now.
