The Hard Facts

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Waller's Research Suggests the Following:

Children who become persistent offenders tend to grow up with negative family and school experiences, such as:

• Being born into a family in relative poverty and inadequate housing

• Being brought up with inconsistent and uncaring parenting, including violence

• Having limited social and cognitive abilities

• Having behavioural problems identified in primary school

• Being excluded from, or dropping out of secondary school

• Living with a culture of violence on television and in the neighbourhood

• Being frequently unemployed and with relatively limited income as a young adult

(The Truth about Crime: Waller I, 2006)

Understanding

So lets be clear about one thing, the degree to which we understand an issue will determine the effectiveness of our response. Regarding young custody leavers returning to the community from custody, research tells us that if we were to randomly choose 100 young people from the Young People's Estate and gather them together just prior to release, we would on average find the following groupings:  

Social Care

• 44 will have a history of local authority care

• 75 will have lived with someone other than their own parents at some point in their lives

• 45 will have lived in inappropriate accommodation at some point in the 12 months prior to sentencing

• 28 will not have had an accommodation placement arranged for them on their release

• 25 will have suffered violence at home

• 12 will already have children of their own

Health

• 85 will show signs of personality disorder

• 31 will have mental health needs including suffering from depression, anxiety and post-trumatic stress

• 90 will have used an illegal drug at some point in their lives

• 72 will have used cannabis daily in the 12 months before arrest

• 69 drank alcohol or used drugs in order to think less about their problems

• 60 will be considered by drugs workers to have a substance misuse problem

Education

• 55 will not have had access to full-time education provision prior to custody

• 28 will have had no education provision at all prior to custody

• 42 when referred to their YOT will have been rated as underachieving at school

• 25 will have been assessed as having special education needs

• 50 will have literary and numeracy levels below those of an average 11-year old

• 25 will have literary and numeracy levels equal to or below an average 7-year old 

Criminal Justice

• 60 will have been in custody more than once

• 6 will have been in custody more than 5 times

• 50 will be sentenced or remanded for either violence against the person, sexual offences, robbery or burglary

• 15 will be imprisoned for breach of a statutory order (normally a community sentence)

• 10 (nationally) will be from minority ethnic communities

• 70 of the custodial population of some London boroughs will be from minority ethnic communities 

   

The Hard Facts

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