BIG INTERVIEW: Hilary Benn, parliamentary under-secretary for community and custodial provision

The Home Office announced last week that reoffending rates have dropped by 22.5 per cent compared with 1997 when Labour came to power and started reforming the youth justice system. That is even better than the first stage of figures from the study a year ago, which showed a 15 per cent drop.

Hilary Benn, minister for prisons and probation, was over the moon.

"It is still very early days for some of the changes to the system. But on the basis of the first two sets of figures, the results are very encouraging," he says.

Benn puts the fall down to the new system of reprimands and final warnings that have replaced repeated cautioning of juvenile offenders, along with the work of youth offending teams.

"The stepped approach to intervention now makes it clear to young people at every stage what the consequences are of going down a certain path," he says. Instead of repeat police cautions, juvenile offenders are now allowed one reprimand and one final warning before an offence will land them in court.

Benn set out a number of other changes that he believes have contributed to the fall in reconvictions, ranging from halving to an average of 67 days the time taken from arrest to sentencing, to involving parents more closely in the process.

"Bringing people to account quickly is the first building block," says Benn.

Another is the restorative approach to youth justice that now requires juvenile offenders in many cases to face their victims and make reparation: "The restorative approach is not appropriate in all circumstances. There is nothing you can do if the victim doesn't want to be a part. But it can be extremely powerful. It brings home to the offender in the sharpest way possible that there are consequences to what he or she has done."

The minister reserved his greatest praise for the 156 youth offending teams that have now been set up in England and Wales to co-ordinate input from agencies such as the police, social services, education and health.

"The youth offending team structure has brought together people who were all dealing in some way with the lives of individual young offenders but who did not really know what the others were doing," says Benn. "When I have visited youth offending teams, the relationship between the workers and the young people has been something to behold. It's about taking an interest in young people, many of whom may not have experienced that in the past."

If the system of reprimands and final warnings is having an effect, Benn holds out even more hope for intensive supervision and surveillance programmes, or ISSPs. These were introduced too late for the period reflected in the figures just released, but should have an effect on the next round.

ISSPs are a form of community sentence targeting the three per cent of persistent offenders who are responsible for a quarter of youth crime, with measures ranging from reparation to victims to community work, education and personal development.

"They can be very tough," says Benn. "Some young people have said that frankly they would rather be in custody."

It comes down, he says, to trying to tailor interventions to the circumstances of individual offenders rather than what he regards as a restrictive and sometimes inappropriate range of "boxes" available for dealing with young offenders in the past.

FYI

- One year juvenile reconviction rates: first quarter of 2001 cohort is available online at www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/

- The study drew on records from the police national computer to compare the reoffending rates of all 26,468 under-18s who received a reprimand, final warning, caution or court conviction in the first quarter of 2001 with a sample of 11,562 who had been similarly dealt with in the first half of 1997

- It found a 20.8 per cent fall in the reconviction rate for young men and a 35.8 per cent fall for young women, who numbered one-fifth of the total.