No extra cash for rehabilitation orders

Speaking at Nacro's annual youth justice conference in Warwick last week, David Hanson said the government would not provide extra money for youth offending teams (YOTs) to fund work with young people given YROs due to a tight comprehensive spending review settlement.

The YRO will replace existing community orders for under-18s and will be made up of a "menu" of interventions. Courts will be able to choose from the menu to construct the sentence thought most likely to prevent the juvenile reoffending.

At the conference Hanson was asked by Mike Thomas, chair of the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers, whether YOTs would receive cash to make sure YROs were effective in reducing the number of young people entering custody - something Hanson had already outlined as a government priority.

"To be honest we have to make much smarter use of the resources we've got," Hanson said. "I haven't got an extra bag of cash but have the potential to get other government departments, whose objectives aren't the same as criminal justice objectives, to focus their resources on criminal justice by supporting YOTs, crime and disorder reduction partnerships and the broader work of the Youth Justice Board."

Hanson said other government departments he wanted to team up with to maximise government cash included the Department of Health, the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills and the Department for Work and Pensions. He said he was also trying to make youth offending a priority for local authorities in their local area agreements.

Thomas said if YROs are to be effective YOTs must spend more time working face-to-face with young people and that additional funding would be needed for this to happen. "It's the first time the government has admitted it's going to have to be creative, which means we're going to have to be creative as there's no additional cash," he added.