SECTION F: DIVERSION FROM CRIME
226. This Report has focussed on how society deals
with convicted criminals, with the principal objectives of protecting
the public and reducing the possibility of further crime through
alternatives to prison. However, the best alternative to prison
is to prevent crime in the first place. We believe that one of
the most effective ways of achieving this is by diverting young
people away from crime when they are in situations where they
might otherwise become offenders. Therefore we support the work
of those diversionary schemes which provide activities for young
people in areas where youth crime is prevalent.
227. We visited one such scheme: YouthWorks, in Blackburn.
There are five YouthWorks initiatives, in Hackney, Leeds, Plymouth,
and Sunderland as well as Blackburn. The programmes aims to create
safer, high quality environments, by harnessing the energies of
young people in a productive way. It works with young people aged
8 to 21 and helps them develop self-esteem and confidence which,
the organisers say, in itself helps to divert them away from crime.
228. The programme in Blackburn is based on the Roman
Road Estate and began in January 1995. Since then they have involved
young people from the estate in a number of activities around
the estate, for example, wood carving, painting, I.T. work and
football training. There is also now a successful Duke of Edinburgh
Award Scheme running on the estate. We were particularly impressed
by the attractive wood carvings the young people had done and
by the fact that in an estate where we were told that petty vandalism
had been rife, these had been left unmolested. We thought this
illustrated the benefits of encouraging young people to take a
constructive attitude to their environment.
229. As well as improving the physical environment
of the estate, the programme appears to be achieving its wider
aim of reducing youth crime in the area. When it began, Roman
Road Estate was number one in a ranking of police beats in terms
of crimes committed; now it is number 14. We were told that in
year one of the programme there was a 35 per cent reduction in
crime across the estate and that this was sustained in years two
and three. So successful has the scheme been in terms of reducing
vandalism on the estate, that North British Housing Association,
who own many of the properties on it say that their annual estate
management costs have been reduced by 50-60 per cent. The scheme
also involves adults from the estate as volunteers and a number
of these have gone on to gain full-time employment partly as a
result of the experience and qualifications they gained while
working for YouthWorks.
230. Another visit we made was to the Dalston Youth
project, which runs two projects, one for 11-14 year olds and
the other for 15-18 year olds. Both projects work with young people
who are at risk of becoming repeat offenders; many have already
offended and a large number are excluded from school. They are
referred by police, youth workers, social workers and schools
and, once on the course attend a residential course and regular
group activities, including pre-employment training, educational
activities and social meetings.. The most noteworthy aspect of
the project, however, is the involvement of volunteers to act
as mentors on a one-to-one basis with the young people. They meet
the young person with whom they are working each week over the
course of a year and offer help and advice to the young people.
We were told that this can be particularly effective because the
mentor is not associated with "establishment" figures
against whom the young people might rebel, such as teachers, family
and social services workers. The project won the 1995 Home Office
"Make a Difference Award" as well as an award for racial
harmony.
231. This scheme is of particular interest as it
is working with many young people who have been, or are at risk
of being, excluded from school. While school exclusions are outside
the remit of this Report, we must note the worrying increase in
the numbers of people excluded from school, and the relationship
between exclusions and crime. The Prime Minister stated in a written
answer that "the numbers permanently excluded from school
stand at around 13,000 a year and have been rising fast. Over
100,000 are excluded temporarily".[269]
The Audit Commission's 1994 report Misspent Youth stated
that "42 per cent of offenders of school age who are sentenced
in the youth court have been excluded from school". It also
stated that "one local authority found that 58 per cent of
those children aged 11 or over who had been permanently excluded
offended either in the year before or the year after their exclusion".[270]
The link between youth crime and exclusions is alarming and the
fact that exclusions are increasing makes it imperative to tackle
this problem; otherwise society is simply storing up trouble for
the future.
232. Diverting young people from crime was recognised
as a worthwhile activity by a number of the witnesses who gave
evidence to us. Lord Bingham's evidence stated that "the
strongest possible support should be given to agencies, whether
public or private, whether national or local, which seek to identify
and assist potential delinquents before they are drawn into a
destructive cycle of offending. Whether this is viewed in human,
social or financial terms, this must make sense".[271]
This view was also supported by NACRO, the Penal Affairs Consortium
and the Howard League for Penal Reform.[272]
233. The Home Secretary and the Prisons and Probation
Minister both supported diversion from crime work. Mr Jack Straw
MP told us "diversion projects can be effective", and
that the Young Offending Teams proposed in the Crime and Disorder
Bill would help to create a more co-ordinated approach to youth
crime, which would include some diversion.[273]
Mr Peter Coad, who, as we have seen, made some scathing criticisms
of the probation service regarding their work with offenders in
the community, thought there could be a role for the service in
carrying out this kind of work, in tandem with social services,
youth services and education departments; he was also optimistic
that the Crime and Disorder Bill would facilitate such work.[274]
234. Despite the support which exists for the idea
of diverting young people from crime, those schemes which exist
to carry out such work find themselves in a constant battle for
funds. YouthWorks in Blackburn, for instance, costs £180,000
a year to run—the equivalent of seven and a half adult prison
places, and yet its one full-time worker finds himself struggling
to raise this money from a variety of sponsors. Currently, the
largest single donation has come from National Lottery funds,
although this is unlikely to be repeated. The precarious financial
situations such projects find themselves in make it difficult
to make long-term plans and takes up the valuable time of their
workers which could be more usefully spent with the young people
concerned.
235. One of the reasons such work is funded erratically
is, according to Rob Allen of NACRO, because "it does not
fall within the remit of any one agency". He told us that,
despite research which suggested that such early intervention
was cost-effective,[275]
the resources of individual agencies were strained to an extent
where they could not fund this kind of longer-term work: "police
are now enjoined not to devote their resources to this sort of
preventive work. Similarly with social services, their statutory
duties are such that putting money into this prevention, although
in the longer term it is the way forward, is very difficult to
do practically".[276]
236. The Prisons and Probation Minister told us that
the Government supported work aimed to divert young people form
crime and that measures in the Crime and Disorder Bill would help
to achieve this; she went on, however: "I cannot give you
a guarantee on resources...except of course that the Government
has said that the measures in the Crime and Disorder Bill need
to be resourced, but a lot of resources I think are already in
the budgets of these various organisations together and they will
be able to look at the local situation and identify needs that
are there and see what looks as if it is going to be most effective
in promoting useful initiatives precisely with the group of young
people that you are talking about".[277]
The importance of evaluating diversion work has been made by a
recent Home Office assessment of research which said that evidence
existed to suggest that this kind of work could be successful
in reducing crime, but that much of this evidence came from North
America. The assessment stated that "there are many promising
approaches in England and Wales which have yet to be rigorously
evaluated".[278]
237. In addition to looking for additional resources,
agencies should ensure they work together to make the most of
existing facilities. For example, greater use should be made of
school playing fields and other resources out of school hours,
to provide additional recreational facilities for young people.
The new Youth Offending Teams should provide a focus for co-ordinating
such activity.
238. As well as looking at what criminal justice
agencies should do with offenders once they have committed crimes,
we feel that much greater attention should be concentrated on
what can be done to divert young people who are at risk of offending
away from a life of crime. This is why we were particularly
impressed by the work of those projects we visited—YouthWorks
in Blackburn and the Dalston Youth Project—which provide
activities and support for young people, to help them turn away
from crime. We were excited by the hard work and enthusiasm of
all those—volunteers as well as professionals—who
work to make these schemes a success.
239. In terms of overall Government expenditure,
these schemes are cheap. YouthWorks in Blackburn costs £180,000
to run each year; but this is meagre compared to the value it
adds to the community in terms of the young people it diverts
from offending, the reduced crime rates, the diminished burdens
on the police, the courts and other criminal justice agencies,
the enhanced quality of life on the estate it serves, the reduced
maintenance costs because of less graffiti and vandalism, and
the improved self-esteem of the young people involved. The cost-effectiveness
of such schemes is difficult to quantify and impossible to ignore.
240. We are pleased to note the support of the
Home Secretary and the Prisons and Probation Minister for work
aimed at diverting young people from crime, and welcome the fact
that the new Youth Offending Teams should make it easier for this
work to be done on an inter-agency basis. However, unlike the
Prisons and Probation Minister, we are not convinced that even
working together these agencies will have adequate resources for
this work to the extent where it could really be effective. If
ever there were a case for Government taking a long-term perspective—and
indeed, being tough on the causes of crime—this is it. Relatively
modest expenditure now could bring extensive savings in the future,
but this requires political will and farsightedness. We note
that, in his statement on the allocation of Home Office funding,[279]
the Home Secretary has given work aimed at diverting vulnerable
persons from getting involved in crime a specific place in his
crime reduction strategy; such projects will therefore be able
to benefit from the £250m earmarked in support of the strategy.
241. We welcome the the prospect of extra funding
for this kind of diversion work announced by the Home Secretary
following the Comprehensive Spending Review and we look forward
to such work being accorded a much higher priority than ever before.
Because it is not aimed at solving a problem in the short
term, it has been at the back of the queue when it comes to funding.
This is a subject which we may well want to investigate further
in the future.
269 Official Report, 11
May 1998, Col. 18. Back
270 Misspent
Youth, Audit Commission,
November 1996, p 66. Back
271 Speech
given to the Police Foundation on 10 July 1997. Back
272 Qs
439-444. Back
273 Qs
12 and 13. Back
274 Qs
235 and 236. Back
275 Q
443. Back
276 Q
442. Back
277 Q
841. Back
278 Reducing
offending: an assessment of research evidence on ways of dealing
with offending behaviour,
Home Office Research Study 187, July 1998, p. 18. We also note
the Home Office's statement to us that the current round of funding
from the Home Office's Programme Development Unit (PDU) for 1996-99
committed a total of £2.1m to a programme of projects aimed
at early intervention with young people at risk of criminality
and that diversion work is also funded through the Single Regeneration
Budget by the Department for the Environment, Transport and the
Regions (HC 1063, 1997-98, p. 7, paras vi-vii). The Home Office
also told us that the New Deal "will create new hope and
opportunities for a large number of youngsters, some of whom might
otherwise have drifted into crime or antisocial behaviour (HC
562-i,1997-98, Annex B). Back
279 Home
Secretary's statement Official Report 21 July 1998 cols
914-15. Back
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