Youth Crime Board Failing To Meet Targets, Says Report

The Youth Justice Board, set up seven years ago by Labour to cut juvenile crime, has failed to hit any of its key performance targets in the past 12 months, according to its annual report.

Although the board’s interim chairman, Graham Robb, says it has “made progress in a number of areas”, its annual report shows that three of the six targets aimed at reducing youth crime are listed as “at risk”; the fourth is classed “highly unlikely to be met” and the fifth as “subject to slippage”; while the sixth cannot be assessed because the data is not available.

The disclosure is a further blow to the board, which has gone through a turbulent year marked by the resignation in January of its chairman, Rod Morgan, who complained that youth courts and children’s prisons were being “swamped” with minor offenders. It was also hit by controversy over the use of restraint in child jails following the inquests into the deaths of two teenage boys.

The report shows that the board is missing its key targets to reduce the number of first-time entrants to the youth justice system by 5% by next March and cut reoffending rates by 5% by the same date.

The first target is officially “at risk” because the identification of missing data has raised the baseline figure for 2005 from 85,000 to 97,000, and so the board says it is unable to report a “comparable figure” for 2006-07. It hopes to “establish a figure” by the autumn.

On the second target the latest available data is for 2004 and only shows a reduction of 1.4% since 2000, when the official baseline is supposed to be 2002-03.

On the third target, which is to cut the under-18 prison population by 10% over three years between 2005 and 2008, the board is going backwards. The number has gone up in both the past two years and is rated as “highly unlikely to be met”.

The fourth target presents a more mixed picture, with none of the 100% targets being hit across 18 categories but many returning a 90% performance.

As for the last two, race action plans are in place but no data is available to assess their impact. Teenage girls have been separated from adult women in prison but extra boys’ places will not be available until later next year.

Jeremy Browne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, described the board’s record as “another sign of the spectacular failure of the government’s approach to cutting crime. The Youth Justice Board is in serious trouble if it cannot meet a single one of its targets.” He argued that it had undermined its efforts to focus on prevention, restorative justice and rehabilitation.

But the board defended the record. “We set tough targets to prove that we meant business about this, and showing the scale of the work ahead,” a spokeswoman said.

“They were ambitious targets, and some are targets for the whole system rather than just what the YJB has direct control over. We want people still to see the things that have been achieved even while we know we’ve got more work to do.” She added that the board was trying to overcome “ingrained problems” in the criminal justice system in the treatment of young offenders.

Targets

1 Cut number of first-time entrants to youth justice system by 5% by 2008.
Official status Target at risk

2 Cut youth reoffending by 5% by March 2008 compared with 2002-03.
Official status Target at risk

3 Cut the number of under-18s in custody by 10% between 2005 and 2008
Official status Highly unlikely

4 Improve assessment of young offenders and access to services to 100%
Official status Target at risk

5 Ensure youth offending teams deliver reductions in local differences by ethnicity in recorded convictions
Official status Cannot be assessed

6 Ensure all girls under 18 are held separately from adults
Official status Slippage