T2A has today submitted its response to Lord Harris’ independent review of deaths of young adults aged 18-24 in NOMS custody. The Harris Review was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice at the start of 2014, led by the Independent Advisory Panel (IAP) on Deaths in Custody. The review will inform the government’s future plans for the management of young adults across the prison estate, including possible reforms to Young Offender Institutions (YOIs).

From 2012 to July 2014, there have been 46 self-inflicted deaths of young adults aged 18-24. There have been nine so far this year (another is awaiting classification). In the past 10 years, more than 160 children and young people under the age of 24 have died in prison.

Summary of the T2A response

The transition process

• The transition to adulthood is a process, not an event, and does not begin and end on a person’s 18^th birthday.
• Conversely, around the 18^th birthday, at a time of maximum risk and vulnerability, legislative frameworks and statutory expectations change in a binary fashion that does not reflect an individual’s preparedness.
• Transitions between child and adult statutory services are particularly poor, and routinely fail to take account of the distinct needs of young adults.
• 19 is the peak age of offending behaviour (for males), but is also the age at which youth-focussed services end.
• In the adult system, the consequences of offending and breach become more punitive, while at the same time access to supportive services such as mental health, supported living, youth work, education and drug treatment change in nature or cease.
• Yet with the right intervention, one that takes account of young adults’ distinct needs, this is the most likely age group to desist from crime.

Taking account of maturity

• Developmental maturity is a better guide to someone’s stage in reaching adulthood than their chronological age.
• Neuroscience has identified that the functions linked to ‘temperance’ (impulse control, rational thinking, empathy) are not normally fully developed in the adult male brain until the mid-20s.
• Maturity should be taken into account at all stages of decision-making, and some progress has been made to date by some criminal justice agencies.

Vulnerabilities

• There are particular vulnerabilities that affect a young person’s maturity, including drugs, alcohol and mental health problems.
• The uncertainty and shortage of safe, stable and suitable accommodation is also a significant challenge for young adults.
• Support for these issues normally involves youth to adult transitions between services beyond any criminal justice interventions, and these transitions are often turbulent and poorly planned (e.g. child and adolescent mental health services to adult mental health services).
• Many young adults involved in crime have acquired brain injuries, and in these cases they are even less likely to reach full neurological development by their mid-20s.
• There are particular vulnerabilities arising from a young person’s gender and ethnicity, and these require specific attention within and beyond the context of young adulthood.

What works for young adults?

• Very few current criminal justice responses take a distinct approach to young adults.
• Outcomes for criminal justice responses for young adults are very poor (both in the community and following custody) and young adults have the highest reoffending and breach rates of all sentenced adults.
• Outcomes from interventions for young adults are best when services are based on providing a consistent, trusting relationship and an approach that is strength-based and solution focussed.
• Young adults respond least well to services that are overly regimented, punitive and punishment-focussed.
• A distinct approach for young adults is effective in reducing offending behaviour and breach of requirements, and contributes to positive social outcomes such as higher rates of employment and better health.
• Services for young adult women are most effective when they take account of both age and gender specific needs.

Criminal justice interventions for young adults

• Young adults represent 10% of the general population but account for 30-40% of the criminal justice caseload (policing time, probation work, prison entries).
• They have the highest reoffending rates of any group (75% reoffend within two years of release from prison), and the highest breach rates of those serving community sentences.
• Distinct and effective interventions for young adults can be implemented at all stages of the criminal justice process, from point of arrest through to release from prison.
• The CPS and sentencers now take maturity into account in decision-making for adults.
• There are very limited options available to sentencers for a distinct young adult sentence.
• The changes to probation services are likely to result in a huge variation and inconsistency in the provision of a distinct approach for young adults.

Young adults in custody

• Although notionally there is distinct provision for 18-20-year-old young adults in custody, this is woefully under-resourced.
• Any distinct provision that remains continues to be eroded by cuts and a lack of leadership from central government.
• Many prison governors and staff want to provide an effective regime, but are being hampered by policy confusion, continual estate reorganisation and untenable resource pressures.
• Levels of violence and self-harm among young adults in many designated Young Offender Institutions make meaningful engagement in purposeful activities almost impossible.
• HM Inspectorate reports of adult prisons holding young adults on remand (the setting where the majority of deaths of young adults in recent years have occurred) have consistently found a lack of strategic approach to young adults.
• Specific provision for young adult women in prison is very poor in most establishments.
• Legal aid cuts mean that it is almost impossible for young adults to receive free representation while in prison for anything other than release date appeals.

Young adults in custody: The way forward

• Other jurisdictions respond differently to offending by young adults, such as in Germany where the courts choose either juvenile or adult law for young adults on the basis of the maturity of the individual and their distinct needs.
• There is great social and economic gain to be made by implementing a distinct approach for young adults, and this can be realised within existing budgets and legislation.
• However, legislative and system change would make this more efficient, and there is worth in considering extending the youth justice system to an older age group.

Response by the Transition to Adulthood Alliance to IAP FINAL

The Conservative MP for Braintree, Brooks Newmark, is the newly appointed Minister for Civil Society following Tuesday’s government reshuffle, stating that he is “absolutely delighted to have been made minister for civil society working with our country’s great charities and voluntary sector”.  Newmark takes over from Nick Hurd MP who has been a committed champion of the third sector in his time in the role.

Newmark, a former member of the Treasury Select Committee, spoke last year at the Transition to Adulthood Alliance fringe event at Conservative Party Conference, which focused on the criminal justice implications of youth unemployment.

As the Guardian reported at the time, Newmark set out his view that businesses should receive tax breaks for providing jobs for unemployed young people. He told delegates that youth unemployment costs the government up to £10bn, and he estimated that even if the scheme resulted in the employment of all 1 million young unemployed people, it would cost the government only £237m. Newmark said this would “encourage businesses to reach out a little bit more” and described the scheme a “win-win for all parties”.

OPPORTUNITY: Help develop guidance on young adults

Clinks is developing guidance for probation practitioners on working with young adults, on behalf of the Transitions to Adulthood Alliance. We are looking for projects to visit that exemplify good practice and creative, effective approaches to working with young adults on probation licence.

Visits will take place between September and November 2014 and will involve meeting frontline workers and service users, to find out what makes the service effective.

We are inviting statutory, voluntary or private sector services to submit an expression of interest form by Friday 15^th August 2014, and we will then select a small number of projects to visit.

For more information download the form here.

“There aren’t many good news stories around in criminal justice at the moment. Prisons are in crisis, probation is in meltdown, there’s been a spate of absconds by serious and violent criminals and the legal aid system has been decimated. With less money to spend than in the past, whoever wins power in 2015 will face huge challenges.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Our youth justice system offers a glimmer of hope – and a pointer to reforms elsewhere. Although not perfect, over the past decade or so fewer under 18s have committed crimes and fewer are behind bars – a double success that has eluded the adult justice system.

This success has its roots in the radical changes that began under Labour in 1998. The key reform was the creation of local Youth Offending Teams – bringing together councils, police, probation, education, health and social services. Their task was to identify those at risk of drifting into a life of crime and to work together to stop them from committing further crimes.

The idea at the heart of this is simple: our justice system works best when, rather than treating everyone the same, services collaborate to get a grip on these people, dealing with the root causes of their offending behaviour.

Although not perfect, these bold reforms have seen dramatic reductions in first time offending – they are a third of what there were ten years ago. The numbers of young people sent to jail have been halved. Testimony to this is that prisons for young people have been closing.

So communities are safer and the taxpayer is better off to the tune of some £80 million.

At a time when we know budgets are going to remain under considerable pressure, these statistics are impossible to ignore.

Let’s be clear. The sanction of prison will always be needed for those who commit serious crimes. But the success of the youth justice system shows we can continue to drive down crime but also cut the numbers locked up. I want the next Labour government to build on these successes.

This week, the IPPR published a report recommending that the youth justice system is extended to young adults, up to the age of 21. This is a sensible idea and one that we will look at very seriously.

It won’t be easy. It will involve culture change in many agencies. It will need to be affordable. But much of the infrastructure is in place, and if we give local authorities the right incentives and support they’ll have powerful reasons to make this work, cut crime and save money.

For many young people, moving from adolescence to the cusp of adulthood sees support through the youth justice system stop, with young adults receiving no specific focus in the criminal justice system. Focusing attention on 18-20 year olds should help address what the House of Commons Justice Select Committee identified as a “period of high risk”.

The key to Labour’s past reforms and future policy is to follow the evidence of what works. The prize is to make our communities safer and to save precious resources. The contrast with how this Tory-led government operated could hardly be starker. They’ve declared war on evidence.

They’ve cancelled pilots which could have produced evidence of what works and what doesn’t work. Instead we have a Justice Secretary who prefers to follow his own ideological instincts. Trusting the instincts of a man who brought us the disastrous Work Programme is a big ask. He failed then and he’s failing now.

The grotesque manifestation of this triumph of ideology over evidence is the half-baked and reckless privatisation of probation. It goes against the grain of everything we know about what helps to reduce re-offending. It’s ripping apart multi-agency working, commissioning services direct from a desk in Whitehall, and handing over supervision of dangerous and violent offenders to private companies with little or no track record in this area.

The government is presiding over a giant experiment. Early reports are that probation privatisation is causing chaos, just as many including Ministry of Justice officials warned it would. At stake, if things go wrong, is the safety of communities up and down the country. I’m not prepared to be so casual with public safety.

The choice is clear. On one side a Tory-led government – driven by ideology – dismantling working relationships that reduce re-offending. And, on the other hand, a Labour Party promising to build on what works to reduce crime and prison numbers, and to do more with less. I am convinced the marriage of evidence-based policy and Labour’s principles will cut crime, reduce re-offending and cut the massive cost of crime to our society.”

Sadiq Khan is Labour MP for Tooting and shadow justice secretary

Welcoming Sadiq Khan’s announcement that the Labour Party is committed to looking at extending the remit of the Youth Justice Board and Youth Offending Teams to cover 18-20 year olds, Joyce Moseley OBE, Chair of the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, said:

“T2A’s evidence shows that the transition to adulthood is a process not an event. Blowing out the candles on our 18th birthday cake doesn’t make us fully formed adults, or mean that we have reached full maturity. Nor does it mean that the interventions and services received as children are no longer needed or irrelevant.

While many government departments have started to recognise the distinct needs of young adults, the criminal justice system still bases its response on chronological age rather than the on a young person’s variable maturity and abilities.

18-24 year olds account for 10% of the population but they make up about a third of those dealt with by criminal justice services like the police, courts and probation.
They are the most likely group to be involved in crime, but with the right intervention, one that takes account of their maturity and their distinct needs, young adults are the most likely age group to turn their lives around and lead crime free lives.

T2A welcomes proposals that apply the lessons and successes of the youth justice system for young adults. We believe that extending the remit of the YJB and Youth Offending Teams would be one way to bring about a more effective approach for those who have turned 18 but are still in their transition to adulthood. With the right allocation of resource this would mean fewer victims of crime in the future, better outcomes for young people, and big savings to the tax payer.”

The focus of IPPR’s  newly-launched Condition of Britain report is how people can work together to build a good society in tough times. It sets out an ambitious agenda for social renewal across Britain covering social exclusion, housing and criminal justice.

One of the report’s chapters looks at enabling young people to have a secure transitions into adulthood, including a section on preventing young people from getting involved in a life of crime.  The main recommendation of this section reflect  T2A (Transition to Adulthood Alliance) thinking that: “The remit of youth offending teams should be extended to those aged up to 20, in order to provide locally-led, integrated support to help keep young adult offenders out of prison, cut reoffending and prevent them from entering a life of crime”.

The report states that the responsibility for tackling youth offending lies locally, with youth offending teams (YOTs), which are organised at the level of top-tier local authorities. YOTs were established in 1998, and have since performed well against their three core objectives. The number of young people entering the criminal justice system for the first time fell by 67 per cent between 2002/03 and 2012/13.  IPPR argue that instead of dealing with young adult offenders through the ‘transforming rehabilitation’ contracts, the next government should extend the successful YOT model to offenders aged 18–20. They suggest that managing this more effectively by reducing offending and reoffending, and ultimately bringing down the size of the prison population, would save money and free up capacity in the adult justice system.

Under the plans outlined in the report, the responsibilities of the YJB would be extended to 18–20-year-olds to ensure that local areas are focused on tackling criminality and anti-social behaviour among young people and young adults, and new community sentences should also be put in place as an alternative to short prison sentences for young adults. In order to boost the financial incentives for local areas to reduce reoffending and keep young adults out of custody over time, the budget for youth custody could be devolved to local areas. IPPR say this would give local areas resources to invest in alternatives to custody.

The plans set out in this report would mean local areas would be held responsible for accounting for their progress in reducing first-time contact with the criminal justice system, keeping all but the most serious young adult offenders out of prison, and attempting to bring down reoffending rates.

HM Inspectorate of Prisons has today published its report of an unannounced inspection of HMP Durham, a prison that holds around 80 young adults within its population of 1,000.

The report was critical of the prisons management of young adults in particular, and stated a concern that “Young adults were disproportionately represented in a number of key areas including violent incidents and use of force. Young adults were more likely than other prisoners to be on the basic level of the incentives and earned privileges scheme. Specific support for young adults was lacking and the prison had no strategy to take this work forward.”

Among its key recommendations was that “There should be a needs assessment of the young adult population, and a clear strategy developed for their overall management”

The inspection team also noted that “Governance of use of force was weak and the frequency with which it was used with young adults was disproportionate to their numbers.” It also found that “Young adults, who comprised 8% of the population, were involved in 17% of incidents of violence, but there was no specific policy to manage young adults or address this disproportionate representation in violent incidents”

Last year, T2A published a report by Rob Allen, A Way Forward, which highlighted examples of good practice in the UK and internationally for the management of young adults in custody in ways that account for their distinct needs and variable maturity.

The management of young adults in custody has long been a concern, with the government consulting last year on plans for reform, before announcing an Independent Review into the deaths of 18-24 year olds in custody to report in early 2015, which is currently calling for evidence.

John Graham, director of independent think-tank the Police Foundation, said the youth justice system needs to be reformed by introducing more continuity to legal proceedings involving young people.

Young offenders should be assigned a magistrate who monitors their rehabilitation and deals with any subsequent offences. Repeat offenders could benefit from seeing the same magistrate at each court visit, the Youth Court inquiry has heard

In addition, he said there should be the option to try young people aged 18 to 21 in youth courts, with the decision based mainly on the “emotional, cognitive, psychological and educational maturity” of the defendant. These recommendations were outlined in the Police Foundation and T2A’s report Policing young adults: A scoping study.

“That’s a much more sophisticated and tailored approach than one that just uses chronological age,” said John Graham.

Graham also called for the abolition of Crown Courts for anybody under the age of 18 regardless of the crime because of the “chaotic and complex lives” many young people face.

Dan Jarvis, Labour MP for Barnsley Central and Shadow Minister for Justice, visited a new Rotherham service for young adults in contact with the criminal justice system.  Part of the national T2A Transition to Adulthood Alliance Pathway programme, the service supports young adults to access community resources to help with areas such as employment and training, housing, mental health and substance misuse. They are supported to identify, understand and alter any behaviours that are creating distress, and to develop tools to uphold these changes. This might include building emotional awareness, confidence, negotiation and problem-solving skills, as well as strengthening their relationships with others, such as family and friends.

Run by national mental health charity Together, the service provides support to 17 to 24-year-olds from the point they come into contact with police and emergency services in Rotherham. Staff help young adults to manage their mental well-being and to avoid future contact with police or overuse of emergency services. Dan Jarvis’ visit coincides with the official launch of the project, which started taking referrals this March.

Dan Jarvis talked to staff and heard about young people’s experiences to learn about how the service works in practice and how young adults benefit.  He said: “Young people with mental health problems are significantly over-represented in youth custody, and far too many end up coming into contact with the criminal justice system because they are unable to access support at an earlier stage.  Much more needs to be done to tackle this if we want to stop youth crime before it starts and successfully rehabilitate young people who do commit offences. 

Today, T2A Alliance member, Revolving Doors Agency, is publishing two new ‘checklists’ for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), focusing on how PCCs can improve responses to young adults and people facing multiple and complex needs in contact with the criminal justice system. These short briefings build on the 2013 report First Generation: One Year On, supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust as part of its Transition to Adulthood (T2A) programme. These reports produce a series of recommendations based on research and experience of effective solutions, and on examples of good practice from PCCs across the country. The checklist on young adults produced on behalf of the T2A Alliance, Improving Responses to Young Adults, presents a checklist with suggestions as to how PCCs should:

• Include specific provision for young adults in local diversion and crime prevention strategies
• Work with partners to reduce young adult reoffending
• Champion improved policing of young adults and
• Engage with young adults.

A broader checklist briefing  ‘The Revolving Doors Checklist – how police and crime commissioners can improve responses to offenders with multiple and complex needs’, suggests how PCCs can improve responses to the ‘revolving door’ population by:

• Reducing demand on frontline police through effective diversion strategies
• Helping to tackle ‘revolving door’ offending
• Involving people with direct experience of the problem and
• Adopting a ‘whole system’ partnership approach to tackling multiple and complex needs locally.

It is hoped that these checklists will provide a useful resource for PCCs as they continue to review their strategies and implement their commitments around reducing crime and tackling repeat offending.