Today sees the launch of First Generation: One Year On, a report by Revolving Doors Agency in partnership with the Transition to Adulthood Alliance. One year after the first police and crime commissioners were elected, the report explores how PCCs are working to cut crime and reduce reoffending.

First Generation: One Year One reviews all 42 police and crime plans across England and Wales, as well as calls for evidence sent to all PCCs offices. It focuses on the extent to which PCCs are prioritising tacking the underlying causes of crime and how they are improving responses to two key groups; people facing multiple and complex needs and young adults aged 18-24.

21 PCCs committed to tackling underlying causes of crime in their plans whilst almost all plans included commitments to preventing crime (41) and reducing reoffending (40).

Individuals with multiple and complex needs and young adults are two groups which are both responsible for high levels of crime in their local area as well as highly vulnerable to being victims of crime. Only 7 PCCs made specific references to complex needs in their plans and where there were references, these tended to be quite broad. Almost all plans made reference to young people without specifying the age range this represents, but very few (4) referred to young adults as a distinct group, despite the increasing understanding of young adults as a group with distinct needs across the sector.

The report also explored two cross-cutting themes; gender and ethnicity. The majority of plans (41) made pledges around domestic violence and abuse, with 14 making a specific reference to women as victims. Conversely, only 3 referred to the needs of women as offenders. 13 plans specially referred to ethnic minority groups but only seven acknowledged issues around policing that affect black and minority ethnic groups disproportionately.

Alongside a review of PCC’s plans, First Generation: One Year One highlights areas of promising practise, and makes recommendations for PCCs to consider as they renew their police and crime plans.

Read the full report here.

The Ministry of Justice recently announced the publication of their consultation, Transforming Management of Young Adults in Custody, which outlines a significant change to the accommodation of young adults serving custodial sentences. The consultation proposes accommodating young adults (18-20 year olds) in mixed institutions as opposed to Young Offender Institution (YOIs) where young adults in custody are currently held.

Speaking about the consultation, Jeremy Wright MP, Minister for Prisons and Rehabilitation, stated:

This Government feel that current provision for young adults in custody, who are 18 to 20, does not adequately meet their needs and does not make the best use of available resources for this age group.

 

With that in mind, this consultation document outlines the Government’s proposed fresh approach to managing young adults in custody, which moves the focus from age-specific institutions to looking at how we can better meet their rehabilitation and resettlement needs.

 

We have already taken substantial steps towards reforming how we manage adults in custody, particularly in terms of ensuring that prisoners are better aligned towards release into their home communities. We want to ensure that young adults can fully benefit from our proposals around transforming rehabilitation, including resettlement prisons and through the gate provision. We want to make sure that young adults who are on longer-term sentences are allocated to the most suitable institutions to meet their rehabilitation needs.

The recently published Transition to Adulthood report Young Adults in Custody: The Way Forward , looks at the provisions currently available for young adults in custody alongside the key challenges that are posed to the custodial care of young adults.

The Transforming Adults consultation will last for six weeks.

The T2A Alliance will be responding to the consultation in due course.

Tuesday 29 October saw the publication of the Ministry of Justice’s new Code of Practice for Victims of Crime, which outlines the support and information victims of crime need, including restorative justice interventions.

The Code for the first time provides information about restorative justice for victims of crimes committed by adult offenders as well as young offenders. The provision of restorative justice interventions to all victims, regardless of the age of the offender was a key recommendation outlined in the report Restorative Justice for Young Adults: Factoring in Maturity and Facilitating Desistance, produced on behalf of the T2A Alliance by the Restorative Justice Council.

The report also outlines the importance of restorative justice practitioners being aware of the practice implications of a lack of maturity amongst young adults and states that restorative should be used to develop maturity and facilitate desistance among young adults who offend. Through including restorative justice in the Code, the MOJ hopes to raise its awareness and better support victims.

The Victims’ Code also offers an enhanced service for victims of serious crime and persistently targeted or vulnerable victims. Additionally, it offers specialist help for young victims as well as the opportunity for victims to tell the court how a crime has impacted on them by making a Personal Victim Statement in court.

Implementation of the new Victims’ Code is expected to begin in December 2013.

Read the Victims Code here
Read the report, Restorative Justice for Young Adults: Factoring in Maturity and Facilitating Desistance here.

On October 29 2013, the government launched its strategy to help young people leaving care. Covering education, employment, financial support, health, housing the justice system and on-going support, the cross departmental strategy outlines the actions the government is taking to support care leavers to live independently. Introducing the strategy Edward Timpson MP, Children’s minister, noted:

As someone who grew up alongside foster children, I know how important and difficult the transition into adulthood can be for children in care and I am committed to improving their outcomes […] We want to see care leavers receiving high quality services that meet their needs and support them make the transition into adulthood.

The Care Leaver Strategy states that care leavers should receive the same level of care and support that other young people receive from their parents, outlining holistic support from mainstream and specialist services.

Care leavers leave home at a younger age than their peers with approximately 10,000 16-18 year olds in England leaving care each year and a large number of care leavers living independently at age 18. Care leavers have distinct needs with regard to housing, in response to this the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) worked with voluntary sector organisations and local authorities to develop a Positive Youth Accommodation Pathway for individuals such as care leavers who are unable to stay within their family network. This pathway approach requires that local Authorities offer tailored accommodation options and a supportive transition to adulthood.

Within the justice system, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and Home Office (HO) acknowledge that young adults and who have been in care and are in the justice system are especially vulnerable. They are also vulnerable to both being drawn into crime as well as becoming victims of crime, including in some cases falling victim to grooming and exploitation online or offline.

Care leavers often lack the networks of support outside of their Local Authority and before and after they turn 18, they require support and guidance. The Department of Education’s (DfE) regulations and guidance, Transitions to Adulthood, outlines the expectation that local authorities stay in touch and provide support young people when they leave care through pathway planning until the young person reaches 21, and later if they are in education.

In response to the strategy, Martina Milburn, Chief Executive for The Prince’s Trust, said:

The transition from adolescence into adulthood is a daunting time for young people, bringing new responsibilities and pressures as they become fully independent. Without the support networks that their peers come to rely on, these vulnerable young people are more likely to face unemployment, leave school with few qualifications and struggle with mental health problems – and so this commitment from the government is hugely important to prevent this group from slipping through the net and into a life on benefits.

We wholeheartedly welcome this cross-government strategy that will see departments work collaboratively to ensure better, all round support for this vulnerable group. The Prince’s Trust, along with members of Access All Areas, will continue to work closely with these departments to ensure the strategy is implemented.

The government will continue to discuss how support to care leavers can further be improved over the next 12 months and intends to publish a report to coincide with Care Leavers Week in 2014.

Read the full strategy here

A new independent initiative, backed by the Ministry of Justice, has been set up to review the outcomes and over-representation of young BAME men throughout the criminal justice process. The review, ‘Improving outcomes for Muslim and African/Caribbean young male offenders – An Independent Review led by Baroness Young of Hornsey’, will report initially in December 2013 and again in autumn 2014.

In March 2013, the Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG), in partnership with Clinks and chaired by Baroness Young of Hornsey, held a roundtable meeting in Westminster to discuss how we can better address the challenge of improving outcomes for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic offenders, through the commissioning process particularly within the context of the huge changes happening across the offender management system.

The roundtable was attended by a diverse group of leaders from relevant fields:

• Senior officials from the Ministry of Justice
• Representatives from the Prison and Probation Services
• Senior staff from charitable foundations
• Former service users
• Leaders from BAME led community organisations
• Chief Officers from large national charities
• Directors from private sector providers
• Academics and researchers

The full report from the roundtable is available at the link below:

http://www.clinks.org/resources-event-reports/how-can-commissioning-process-improve-outcomes-bame-offenders-may-2013

Following the roundtable Jeremy Crook, Director of BTEG, Clive Martin Director of Clinks and Baroness Young met with Secretary of State for Justice, Chris Grayling MP, to seek his support for the roundtable’s principle recommendation: To establish a time-limited Task Group to investigate further how particularly the Transforming Rehabilitation process can deliver improved outcomes for BAME offenders.

Mr Grayling gave his support for the Task Group to look specifically at delivering improved outcomes for Muslim and African/Caribbean young adult male offenders (18-24 year olds.) The Task Group is being supported by Clinks and BTEG and chaired by Baroness Young. It held its first meeting on 21 October and will produce an interim paper with recommendations for the Secretary of State before the end of 2013, followed by a final report in autumn 2014.

The Transition to Adulthood Alliance (T2A), convened by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, will share the breadth of experience from its collective membership into the review. If you have any examples of best practice or relevant research that the review may find useful please forward them to Clare Hayes at Clinks [email protected]

A new report from the Transition to Adulthood Alliance examines how the needs of young adults are met in custody, finding that in many instances prisons fail to provide sufficient activities, education and levels of safety.

The report, ‘Young Adults in Custody: The Way Forward,’ was written by Rob Allen, co-founder of the Justice and Prisons and former Chair of the Transition to Adulthood Alliance. It includes an examination of the situation in other jurisdictions, including Germany, where young adults can be sentenced either as juveniles or adults, depending on the offence and maturity.
Among recommendations included in the report are that young adults be placed near to home, in institutions which provide high-quality activities. Rob Allen identifies effective leadership from governors as key to meeting the distinct needs of young adults – making specific commitments to meeting the health, development and resettlement needs of that group. His report also recommends a wider range of residential placements, age-appropriate discipline systems, targeted staff training, a remodelling of all YOIs as Secure Colleges and research into effective means of violence reduction which don’t reduce activities.
You can read the report in full online here.

As in previous years, The Transition to Adulthood Alliance will be at all three party conferences. This year the focus is on the importance of employment for young people as a route out of the criminal justice process.

These events are in partnership with the Guardian newspaper, Business in the Community and Working Links.

T2A’s events are open to all, but each takes place inside the relevant party conference secure zone and therefore you will require a conference pass.

Title: “Whose responsibility is it to help disadvantaged groups find work? Would you employ a young offender?”

Liberal Democrats (Glasgow)

Tuesday 17th September, 8am-9am

Boisdale 1 in the SECC

Labour (Brighton)

Tuesday 24th September, 5.30pm-6.45pm
Consort Room, Grand Hotel

Conservatives (Manchester)

Tuesday 1st October, 5.30pm-6.45pm
Marquee, Manchester Central

A new study into the practical application of the recently revised Crown Prosecution Service Code, which includes maturity as part of the ‘public interest test,’ recommends that training should be made available to Crown Prosecutors, the Police and defence lawyers

Prosecuting Young Adults: The potential for taking account of maturity at the charge and prosecution stage of the criminal justice system, a report the Criminal Justice Alliance for the T2A Alliance, looked at implementation of the new provisions to take the maturity of an individual into account. It found significant levels of expertise within the CPS in working with questions around the concept of maturity, though with scope to strengthen the consistency and accuracy of its application.

Recommendations of the report include the development of inter-agency protocols for gathering and sharing information; strengthening and extending the use of Conditional Caution for young adults and exploring the potential for problem-solving approaches in Courts, where maturity has been identified at the prosecution stage.

You can read the report in full here, and learn more about the Criminal Justice Alliance here.

The Transition to Adulthood (T2A) Alliance and the University of Birmingham (Institute of Applied Social Studies) have today published a new guide for probation practitioners to help them take account of maturity when completing an assessment of needs and risks for young adult offenders aged 18-24.

Earlier this year, the practice guide was trialled with the two largest probation areas; London Probation Trust and Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust. It was found that, by using the guide, probation staff could strengthen the quality and effectiveness of Pre-Sentence Reports (PSRs) and proposals to sentencers. As well as explaining what maturity means in a criminal justice context, the guide poses a series of questions that will help practitioners to make a sound judgement about a young adult’s level of maturity.

Since 2011, adult sentencing guidelines published by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales have stated that consideration should be given to ‘lack of maturity’ as a potential mitigating factor in sentencing decisions for adults. Furthermore, in 2013 the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) issued a new Code of Conduct which for first time included maturity as a factor for consideration of culpability as part of its public interest test.

These changes to policy and practice have significant implications for agencies working with young adult offenders throughout the criminal justice process, including the police, the CPS, the probation service, sentencers and practitioners delivering services.

In July, the Probation Chiefs Association (PCA) held a round-table on young adults in the criminal justice system at which the guide was welcomed by practitioners and policy-makers.

David Chantler, Chief Executive Officer of West Mercia Probation Trust said the guide would help tackle a long-standing challenge for probation:

“We have talked about taking  maturity into account for a long time, but I confess I have always been stumped about how you would actually do it. I think this maturity Guide leads us into this in a way that avoids stigmatisation and labelling, and integrates with existing process – it is a very mature response to a wicked issue”.

Andrew Hillas, the Probation Chiefs Association lead on young adults and Assistant Chief Officer at London Probation Trust, welcomed the guide as a means to support a more effective approach for young adults:

“It is a very positive development that Sentencing Guidelines now acknowledge the importance of taking maturity into account when determining a sentence. However, there is a significant gap in Probation knowledge, training and practice in how to undertake skilled maturity assessments so that they can advise sentencers on maturity issues through Pre-Sentence Reports.

“I was very encouraged to learn that T2A wanted to address this key knowledge gap and that they had commissioned Birmingham University to develop this Practitioner Guide.

“Having participated fully in the piloting of the Guide in London, I have experienced its usefulness at first hand and am very impressed with both the quality and the accessibility of the Guide; I would warmly recommend the Guide to be used by Probation practitioners across the country

to ensure that the maturity of young adult offenders is routinely taken into account in the assessment and sentencing process, thus contributing to the provision of more effective justice for this group.”

Gloucestershire Probation Trust is developing a T2A approach, based on the T2A and Clinks report ‘Going for Gold’.

Gloucestershire Probation Trust (GPT) and Gloucestershire County Council Youth Support Team (YST) have collaborated on the development of a new team to work with young people aged 15 – 21 who have got caught up in the criminal justice system.

The T2A Alliance, convened by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, has shown nationally that there is scope for improvement in the ways in which young people are helped to face up to the offences they have committed, and access the support they need, in order to move towards a rewarding and pro-social adult life.  The latest research into neurological development confirms that maturation continues well into a person’s 20s.  Research also shows that people mature at varying rates. 

The T2A Alliance campaigns for greater recognition of a young person’s level of maturity when deciding the response to criminal or anti-social behaviour.  T2A stresses that in many cases adult sanctions or disposals are not appropriate for young people, who may need help with accommodation, employment or substance misuse.  T2A recognises the critical need for those who have offended to understand the impact of what they have done, and so places the highest importance on restorative justice being an aspect of every sentence.

The new Gloucestershire team will look to identify best practices from elsewhere, as well as innovating its own approaches.  It combines workers from both the GPT and YST and will draw expertise and skills from both organisations to forge individualised packages of interventions for the young people it will work with.  The team will also include a seconded police officer and will draw on professionals from other agencies as needed.

The team will remain under the joint management of GPT and YST and will benefit from being embedded in both organisations.  It will draw its cohort from both GPT and YST.  Initially this will be boys and young men who are identified as at particular risk of continuing to offend into later adulthood.  The team will also broker the transfer of cases from YST to GPT as a young person approaches their 18^th birthday.  Although Gloucestershire was recently recognised by HM Inspectors as having some good practice in this area, this process can be improved further, through earlier planning and more extensive communication and information transfer.

John Bensted, Chief Executive Officer of Gloucestershire Probation commented: “This is another example of Gloucestershire Probation responding to local priorities, as set out in the Police and Crime Commissioner’s Strategic Plan.  Once again we can call upon our excellent relationships with local partners to deliver exciting innovations that will aid young people become worthy citizens and so protect the people of Gloucestershire.”

Alison Williams, Director of the Youth Support Team added: “We work with young people who face considerable challenges during the process of growing up.  They need support tailored to their needs, but they also need to be held accountable for their actions and to understand the impact of what they do.  This new team has been given the licence to innovate and to think creatively about building upon the strengths of its clients and helping them navigate the difficult years of late adolescence.”

Daniel Hughes, the team manager, concluded: “This is a really exciting opportunity to build on the strengths of the partner organisations and come up with a service that is innovative and will help young people identify their own solutions and find new purpose in their lives.”

For more information, contact [email protected]