BLOG

We've just experienced over a decade of youth justice reforms involving a unprecedented public spend of over £2.5 billion to try and bring innovation and change to young people's experience of the youth justice system. Although at least 75% of the youth justice budget (£300m / year) has been spent on custody placements, a number of YOTs have done some pretty remarkable work to reduce numbers within the system and particularly those who are sent to custody. Only 7% of young people in the youth justice system end up in custody which of course means that 93% don't. However, that's not the whole story. Of that 7% (approx. 7000/yr), 60% return to custody at least once and 6% return 5 times or more. It therefore goes without saying that the one staggeringly obvious area of weakness that still remains, is the effective resettlement of these teenagers.

The high recidivism figures tend to fuel the 'Prison Doesn't Work' debate. Whilst it's hard to find practitioners working on either side of the custody - community fence who might argue that prison is a good place for teenagers, to only state that 'prison' doesn't work, fails to convey the whole truth. Looking at other related statistical evidence concerning our target group, one must also conclude that for most of those who end up being cared for by the Young People's Estate, 'Family' didn't work, 'Education' didn't work, and nor did 'Local Authority Care'! So one might question then why it is that the Prison Service are singled out as being the 'failing agency'.

Further questions might also be asked concerning what people understand the function of custody to be, particularly in regards to outcomes for young people. There are those who wrongly assume that that a spell in custody will 'fix' everything - a short, sharp shock! But most of those who work within the youth justice system recognise that a 16-week custodial placement is not enough time to transform the accumulated disadvantages experienced by a 16-year old or the deeply entrenched lifestyle habits. And of course the word 'resettlement' also echos a reminder that on either side of a stretch in custody is something called the 'community'. Just to be clear in regard to the degree of influence on their lives, at the point of release from an average 1st sentence, a 16 year old has spent 112 days in custody compared to around 5900 in the community. Logically, it appears to be the community that needs to be made to 'work' rather than custody.