T2A has today provided oral evidence to the final session of the Justice Select Committee’s Inquiry on Young Adult Offenders.

The Committee, whose landmark Inquiry has lasted seven months and will likely report in the next few weeks, heard from a panel including Max Rutherford, Criminal Justice Programme Manager at the Barrow Cadbury Trust. He gave evidence on behalf of T2A, alongside Professor Huw Williams (who has led a number of T2A projects on neuro-maturation and crime) and Angela Cossins from the National Probation Service.

Footage of the panel is here, from 10.32.51

Questions put to the panel focused on the management of young adults in prisons, the merits of specialist young adult courts, and the opportunities for diversion. The discussion also featured an exchange on Ministry of Justice leadership, maturity assessments pre-sentence, and preventing deaths in custody.

During the session, Max Rutherford highlighted the potential that young adults have to desist from crime if the right intervention is made, and the wider benefits of a distinct approach to young adult offenders:

“Yesterday, a borough police commander, who is leading a bid to T2A to run a young adult court pilot in his area, told me the reason for him that 18-25 year olds should be a distinct group and should have a special effort of resources and capacity is that if we get it wrong with that age group, there is at least a decade-long consequence, socially and financially”.

Max Rutherford also highlighted T2A’s position that all 18-25 year olds in prison should be subject to a separate, purposeful prison regime. Asked about the Government’s plans for autonomous prisons, he noted that although the government’s prison reform agenda has potential, a more immediate issue is its current lack of a distinct strategy for managing young adults in prison:

“Containing young adults for 23 hours a day in their cells, albeit perhaps in cells where there are fewer ligature points from which to hang themselves, is not going to keep staff safe and it’s not going to achieve any positive outcomes post-release”.

You can watch footage of the panel here, as well as the preceding contribution from Andrew Selous MP, the Minister for Prisons and Probation and Michael Spurr, the Director General of the (NOMS) National Offender Management Service.

The Restorative Justice Council has today published ‘Making restorative justice work for women who have offended’, a new research report that sets out a series of recommendations for practitioners and policy makers on how to improve female offenders’ access to and experiences of restorative justice.

The report recommends that all female offenders should be offered a chance to take part in restorative justice, calls for partnerships to be developed between women’s centres and restorative justice services to ensure that women taking part in restorative justice can access appropriate support, and highlights the need for restorative justice practitioners to be aware of the particular needs of women who have offended.

Read ‘Working with women who offend: a guide for Restorative Justice practitioners’.

A new report published by Maslaha and T2A focuses on the disproportionate number of young Muslims in the criminal justice system compared to their proportion in the general population. The report ‘Young Muslims on Trial – a scoping study on the impact of Islamophobia on criminal justice decision-making’ examines how perceived prejudice and discrimination against young muslim men can impact on crimnal justice decision making, particularly in sentencing, probation supervision and management in prison.

Based on interviews with groups of young Muslim ex-offenders in London and Leicester, as well as criminal justice professionals, this scoping study has found that young Muslim men who found faith in prison faced suspicion and negativity.   The report finds that although only 1% of Muslim offenders are in prison for terrorist offences, there is a perception amongst professionals that prisons can foster radicalisation, and this appears to be setting the tone for a more punitive approach to Muslim offenders.  The report also suggests that criminal justice agencies are missing out on an opportunity to harness Islam’s potential to help young Muslims rehabilitate.

Helen Attewell, Chief Executive of Nepacs, a voluntary sector organisation working with prisoners and their families in the North East blogs about the fragmentation of joined up working with young adults and the need for a whole system response.

Clinks and Nepacs recently hosted a couple of round table events in Newcastle.  One session presented an inspirational vision from Max Rutherford of the Barrow Cadbury Trust and Jackie Lowthian of Social Justice Solutions on how young adults within the criminal justice system could be better supported in their transition to adulthood.

Much of the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) discussion was spent regretting the erosion of the strong working relationships between local Youth Offending Services and Probation Trusts which had formerly facilitated ‘warm handovers’ of young people into adult services.  There were some particularly striking examples of multi-agency good practice through the Integrated Offender Management teams. However, much of this work has now been fragmented through the creation of privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) and their separation from the National Probation Service (NPS).

It was pointed out that we need more join up, not less, since many of those young people who have committed crime have multiple issues to contend with – poverty, mental health, family breakdown, substance misuse problems and homelessness.  A strategic focus on young adults seems the best way to target scant resources on the cohort of people who not only are committing most crime, but are also at high risk of reoffending and potentially about to embark on a lifetime career in crime.  It seems that England and Wales are almost unique in defining 18 year olds as ‘adults’.  In most other European countries, adulthood in criminal justice terms is 21, and it is acknowledged that maturity rates can vary between individuals.

Staff on the ground are doing their best to keep ‘joined up’ between juvenile and adult systems, but we questioned who might give the strategic lead on this issue within the North East region?  Was it NOMS, YJB, Local Criminal Justice Boards or Community Safety Partnerships?  The consensus was that Police and Crime Commissioners were best placed to champion this agenda as a way of minimising new entrants to the system as well as reducing reoffending and potentially creating fewer victims. Let’s hope we can persuade them to take up the challenge!

The session on the Taylor Review celebrated the successes of the Youth Offending Services in contributing towards a steep drop in the number of children in custody.  Prevention is always better than cure, and investment in a range of diversionary activities and services which address the root causes of the problem rather than criminalising young people will have a huge pay off in terms of reductions in cost to the public purse as well as less human misery.

Where children have committed crimes which are so severe that a custodial sentence is deemed necessary, the group welcomed the notion of smaller, more locally-based establishments with a focus on education.  How ironic then, to discover that although the juvenile estate might become more specialised, there are proposals to abolish the Young Offenders Institutions (YOIs) which currently hold 18-21 year olds, and absorb those prisoners into adult jails.   Yet these are the people identified as needing extra help through their transition to adulthood.

This proposal would be a particular loss for the North East, where although HMYOI Deerbolt is subject to many of the challenges faced across the prison estate (reductions in staffing, unpredictable legal highs etc.) it remains a beacon of good practice.  Successes include the work of the Drug and Alcohol Recovery Team (DART) and the work on diversity, including support for young people from travelling backgrounds.  Nepacs has pioneered family support at the jail over the past five years, developing parenting courses, special family visits, work with new fathers, and recently establishing a ‘Dads and Dads to be’ wing, where family becomes the focus of the collective identity of the residents, rather than ‘drug user’ or ‘gang member’.  This ground breaking needs-led work funded by the Big Lottery has provided opportunities for transformative change for many young individuals, who might be completely lost within a big Category B local jail.

My take home message was that we need to submit evidence to the Select Committee on Young Adult Offenders to make sure that a bad situation for young adults in prison isn’t made much worse.  A stark reminder of how important it is to get this right was the report that there has been a sudden sharp rise in the number of self-inflicted deaths of young people in adult jails in recent months.  Colleagues at Deerbolt reported that although none of the young people in their care had killed themselves, sadly, there were a number of instances where this had happened when they were transferred into the adult estate.

It was also pointed out that if young offenders are treated as adults at age 18, then why are they not entitled to the same levels of housing benefits, Job Seeker’s Allowance and Minimum Wage as adults?  So many contradictory policies and such high levels of need.

Young women in prison are more likely to suffer from a toxic mix of fear and boredom than older women, according to new research published today.

Prisons are failing to address the distinct needs of young women aged 18-24, including education and mental health needs, in the face of evidence that they should be treated differently to older women in custody. In the youth estate, teenage girls are viewed as having such specific needs that not one girl under 18 is held in a young offender institution, making the transition across to the women’s estate when they turn 18 particularly stark and risky.

Yet new research for the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) Alliance has found that all women over 18 are treated the same and mixed together. This is in contrast to young men, for whom there is separate legislation and distinct young adult establishments.

Despite some efforts made in individual institutions to meet the needs of this age group, the report finds that prison regimes do not sufficiently follow the Prison Service Order to provide younger women prisoners more supervision and activities. Recent inspection reports of women’s prisons have consistently highlighted a lack of strategy and service for young adults, with not one young women-specific accredited programmes available in the estate. A lack of progress in prison education was highlighted as a particular concern. The report calls for a strengthening of existing guidance and staff recruitment to enable effective, distinct management of young adult women in prison, and the introduction of a presumption against short prison sentences for non-violent crimes.

More than half of the 550 young adult women in prison are on remand or serving short sentences of less than 6 months, with the vast majority convicted of non-violent crimes – half are convicted of theft or handling stolen goods. The case for community alternatives for this group is all the more strong given that around a quarter of young adult women in prison are mothers, and their children are likely to be younger than older women in prison.

18-24 year olds account for around 16% of women in prison, a proportion that has declined in recent years. However, HM Inspectorate of Prisons noted in its 2015 Annual Report that “the reduction of young adults over recent years has been significant and is to be welcomed. However, those who remain are some of the most vulnerable, troubled young adults and have complex needs”. It is likely that half will have more recently been in statutory care, and the victim of more recent traumas compared to older women who are likely to have experienced these events longer ago. Young women are also particularly vulnerable to exploitation by other prisoners (both other young adults and older women).

Young women report a poorer experience of prison than older women, especially in their first nights. Ongoing neurological and hormonal development of young women in prison increases the susceptibility to peer pressure, being unable to cope with prison life and mental illness. Young adult women are more likely to self-harm, and the most common age of self-inflicted deaths of women in prison was 20 years old and over a fifth (21%) of deaths were of those aged between 18 and 21.

Rob Allen, the report’s author, said: “Despite a growing and overdue recognition by criminal justice services that young people do not magically achieve adult maturity on their 18^th birthday, there’s an important group of young adults whose needs have not yet fully been analysed let alone met- young women.  Whether it’s because numbers are small or a sense that their characteristics differ little from those of older women, recent initiatives have neglected to consider how best young females should be managed when they come into conflict with the law. A distinct approach to young adult women is likely to give them the best chance of growing out of crime and leading happy, healthy and productive lives.”  

Download the report here

The Justice Committee Inquiry on Restorative Justice has now published T2A’s evidence which you can read here.

The Centre for Justice Innovation have today launched a call for expressions of interest from areas wanting to run innovative new criminal courts that will focus on 18-25 year olds.

Based on CJI’s feasibility study for T2A in 2015, these courts will test an adapted approach with young adults. CJI is looking for areas that recognise the distinct needs of young adults, and where new approaches are already being tested or considered at other stages of the justice system. CJI will work with sites for up to four years to: understand current needs and responses; pilot evidence-led adaptations; and evaluate the impact.

This is an opportunity for areas to receive free support and become part of a movement of court innovators testing new approaches in response to the variety of people who use our courts. It is also a chance to be at the forefront of the implementation phase of the T2A agenda. Most importantly, it is a chance for courts to take an active role in using their authority as an opportunity to reduce crime and prevent the return of those who come before them.

Full details of the ‘Offer and Expectation’ can be found here.

To submit an expression of interest, please read the materials here.

This initiative is funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust.

T2A Alliance is disappointed by the findings of an HM Inspectorate of Probation report Transition Arrangements: a follow-up inspection published today.  The report finds that the youth to adult justice service transition arrangements for 18 year olds on probation have deteriorated since the last inspection in 2012.  This is despite the availability of guidance and instances of good practice, which demonstrate how transitions could and should be handled.

This finding gives further urgency to the need to reform the way the criminal justice system responds to distinct needs of young adults.  Lord Harris’ report of the Independent Review into self-inflicted Deaths in NOMS Custody of 18-24 year olds published in July 2015 highlighted the vital importance of good transition in ensuring positive outcomes for vulnerable young adults. This was backed up by the Government’s response which also endorsed the value of recognising the distinct needs of young adults in the criminal justice system.

However, despite HM Inspector of Probation highlighting many areas which need improving in the transition process, it is encouraging that services in York, one of the areas highlighted as demonstrating good practice, were recommended along with T2A’s Practice Guide on Maturity and it’s Going for Gold report, which describe how services can be developed to improve outcomes for young adults.

With significant cuts to policing budgets in recent years, police leaders have increasingly needed to think creatively about how they can move ‘upstream’ to prevent crime and reduce demand. The Revolving Doors Agency and the Transition to Adulthood Alliance (T2A) have published a briefing highlighting promising practice from across the country as police and crime commissioners (PCCs) try to meet this challenge.

A significant amount of police time is spent responding to vulnerable people who have fallen through the gaps of community and health services. For example:

• 84% of all control room calls relate to ‘non-crime incidents’, often linked to issues of vulnerability, public protection and safeguarding
• Mental health-related incidents account for an estimated 20-40% of police time
• Relatively small numbers of individuals with multiple and complex needs place high levels of repeat demand on the police, both as repeat offenders and victims of crime.

Partnership working is crucial to addressing these challenges. However, too often local services are not structured to work in a preventative way, focusing on one problem at a time, and only responding to issues once they have escalated rather than intervening at an early stage.

With a responsibility to reduce crime and protect police budgets, PCCs have an interest in showing leadership locally on this agenda.

This briefing is the fourth in a series of ‘PCC spotlights’ highlighting examples of promising practice among PCCs on challenging partnership issues.

Read the full briefing here.

Young adults (age 18-25) make up less than 10% of the population, but represent roughly a third of people sentenced in criminal courts each year.

In a new report, ‘Young adults in court: developing a tailored approach’, Centre for Justice Innovation (CJI) outline a number of feasible adaptations to standard court practice for young adults. These include measures such as use of simplified language to aid participants’ understanding, taking steps to ensure the process is understood, encouraging family participation, and adapting the courtroom environment to make it more conducive to engagement.

Taken together, CJI argue that these adaptations could increase perceptions of procedural fairness and improve rehabilitation for this distinct population. With the right interventions, which take into account growing evidence around developmental maturity and age-specific needs, young adults are far more likely to grow out of crime.

The report says that there is clear evidence that how decisions in court are made and how the process feels to participants  can be as important as the sentence itself to young people’s perceptions.

Many of the changes outlined in the report are relatively modest. And much of the practice recommended already exists, at least in aspiration, in our youth courts.

In the course of research for the report, the researchers spoke with many court stakeholders who recognised a need to develop a tailored approach for young adults, and who were enthusiastic about delivering adapted practice.  The Lord Chancellor has recently lent his support to the concept of specialist “problem-solving” courts which would play a more active role in the process of rehabilitation.