Who should foot the youth custody bill?

There is certainly a strange scenario that some of the costs of a non-custodial sentence are picked up by the local authority through the work of the youth offending team and the programmes it is required to deliver, while custodial placements are financed through the YJB. The idea that local authorities should also pay for the latter was first mooted some five years ago.

However, even if the principle may be logical - especially in that it might "incentivise" local authorities to work harder for cheaper alternative community penalties - putting it into practice is rather more complicated. It is certainly not simply a case of transferring some pro rata resources from the YJB to local government. Rates of offending and sentences to custody vary markedly between local authorities.

The devil lies in the detail. Would the state, for example, fund custody up to a certain benchmark, with higher rates covered by council tax? What proportion of existing custodial costs would those councils with low prison rates be charged for?

Whatever the practical challenges of moving in this direction, let us return to the principles attached to the argument. Though young people should be held responsible and accountable for their offending behaviour, the further guiding elements of the youth justice system are restoration and reintegration. Young offenders are part of localities, and sending them off elsewhere to custody severs not only negative but also positive attachments and commitments.

In The Man Who Listens to Horses, Monty Roberts observed that herds of wild mustang sent their wayward young stallions off to cool down but always left a visible space for them to return. This may be where early supporters of 20th-century versions of restorative justice developed their ideas around "reintegrative shaming".

Magistrates are also members of those local communities, as are the professionals who service the local youth justice system. Those professionals have, in recent years, established far more collaborative and conscientious interventions than have existed in the past. Regrettably, the sentencers and politicians often remain sceptical about their usefulness. What's more, they are subject to a wider set of pressures in terms of sentencing responsibilities and electoral popularity. It is that credibility gap that probably commits more young people to custody than needs to be the case. Before looking at the technicalities of getting more youth justice resources into the local purse through the diversion of a greater number of young people from custody, clearer relationships and a firmer understanding need to be established between all players in local youth justice.

Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan.