26 April 2016

T2A gives evidence to the Justice Select Committee Inquiry on Young Adult Offenders

Young adults

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.

30 March 2016

Restorative Justice and women offenders

Young adults

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’.

 

21 March 2016

Young Muslims on Trial

Young adults

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.

8 March 2016

Transition arrangements, transformation and what might prudently be left alone …

Young adults

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.

 

7 September 2015

New guide for probation officers sets out good practice for working with young adult offenders

Young adults

“A probation officer empowers you, helps you choose your path and provides an insight into the opportunities available.” (Young adult)

 

A new guide ‘Effective approaches with young adults: A guide for probation services’ published by Clinks and T2A, provides a range of practical suggestions on how probation practitioners can engage with young adults, deliver a tailored and effective approach, and achieve improved outcomes. Importantly, the guide draws on the experiences of both practitioners and young adults themselves.

 

Young adults (18-24-year-olds) constitute less than 10% of the general population but make up one third of those involved in the criminal justice system (CJS). However, this age group is also the most likely to grow out of and stay out of crime. Getting it right at this critical time is crucial to helping young adults make a successful transition to a crime-free adulthood. A young adult interviewed for the guide said:

 

“My probation officer needs to show an honest care of my welfare and everything going on in my life. Showing a genuine interest in my life will help me feel like they are on my side because at first it just feels like they are part of the system like the rest.”

 

Grace Strong, Strategic Partnership Manager of a Young Adult Project, said:  “In my experience, it is often the small things that make a big difference when working with young adults.”

 

In recent years there has been a growing recognition amongst professionals and policy makers in the justice system that the specific needs of young adults require a distinct approach. The practitioners interviewed for this guide said that because of the chaotic lives these young adults lead their work is often unpredictable, requiring them to adapt and respond on a daily basis. This made the flexibility of services and a person-centred approach absolutely vital to the success of any young adult project.

 

Clinks Director, Clive Martin said: “Most of us change when we are encouraged by people who understand and support us. This guide provides clear evidence about how a collaborative and supportive approach works best for young adults.”

 

Download ‘Effective approaches with young adults: A guide for probation services’ .

8 December 2014

Prison book ban ruled unlawful

Young adults

The High Court has declared that the Government’s ban on sending books to prisoners in England and Wales is unlawful.

 

The ban on sending books into prison was brought in in November 2013, as part of the Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) scheme, which stated that prisoners are not allowed to receive parcels unless they have “exceptional circumstances” such as a medical condition.  The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has said that the thinking behind the changes was to crack down on the amount of drugs getting into prison.

 

Prisoners had argued that books sent to them in parcels could contribute to rehabilitation.  A judicial review of the rule was brought by prisoner Barbara Gordon-Jones, a life sentence prisoners at HMP Send, near Woking in Surrey.

 

Mr Justice Collins ruled that there was “no good reason in the light of the importance of books for prisoners to restrict beyond what is required by volumetric control and reasonable measures relating to frequency of parcels and security considerations.”  There is no specific ban on  books in the IEP but he argued that the severity of the restrictions could clearly prevent acquisition and possession.   Whilst Mr Justice Collins acknowledged that in some prisons there is good access to a well-stocked prison library, he also recognised that this is by no means the case for all prisoners and commented that “to refer to them as a privilege is strange”.   The restriction was declared unlawful by Mr Justice Collins because the policy’s effect was contrary to what Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, said he intended.

1 December 2010

Transition to Adulthood

Young adults

Hello there this is the Barrow Cadbury Trust.