Examination of Witness (Question Numbers
180-190)
MS FRANCES
DONE AND
MR BOB
ASHFORD
13 JANUARY 2009
Q180 Mr Winnick: That is your policy.
Ms Done: Well, we support the
clear message that that sends out.
Q181 Mr Streeter: Do you also support
the Mayor of London's proposals, made quite recently, to separate
first-time offenders from repeat offenders at young offender's
institutes?
Ms Done: Yes and no. We are working
very closely with the Mayor's Office, and we really very much
appreciate the focus that the Mayor of London is now having in
terms of youth crime particularly. We have talked through, and
we have responded to, the Time for Action Programme in which this
proposal came forward. We do feel that, whilst we understand the
notion that special attention should be given to first-time young
people in custody, in reality we feel that the special attention
should be given to those young people coming into custody who
have got to the point in their offending career where they are
ready to change: because actually dealing with those together
separately, if we can find the resource, the space, et cetera,
to do it, is likely to be much more effective: because some young
people when they come into custody for the first time, yes, it
will be a very frightening experience, it usually is, but they
are not necessarily going to be the young people who are most
likely to respond to the working with them to, effectively, get
them out and resettle them. The other area we very strongly believe
is developing as an area of work that needs an awful lot more
focus by local authorities in London and elsewhere is that young
people who are ready or in the frame of mind where they may start
to think seriously about not offending again, the sort of support
they need in terms of accommodation, getting back into training,
jobs, education, and personal mentoring support, which is so difficult
to find, those resources and support is equally important as anything
you do individually with a young person on first detention in
custody. We have had discussions with Kit Malthouse and James
Cleverly about this—so they are very well aware of our view—but
we are very supportive of the really big focus that the Mayor
is now placing on youth crime.
Q182 Tom Brake: Could I ask whether
you have any idea what the cost for this proposal would be? If
you are housing first-time offenders in a different place from
repeat offenders, or, indeed, your own proposals about treating
people who are ready to reform differently, presumably there are
substantial cost implications for this.
Ms Done: Basically, at the moment
the Mayor's Time for Action Plan was suggesting that this is an
approach. The Mayor obviously is not running the youth offending
institutions, the Mayor obviously is working with us, HM Prison
Service, and so on, to talk this through. Should a proposal to
assess, for example, young people coming into, say—perhaps
Feltham is not the best example, there is a lot of remand young
people there—Cookham Wood, which is a new YOI coming on-stream
for young men in London (and we had a visit there recently with
James Cleverly to talk about the possibilities), if there were
to be a proposal to do a triage system to assess the young people
going into Cookham Wood who were most likely to benefit from separate
treatment, because the numbers in a young offender institution
are very large for the number of staff available—it is a
facility where it is pretty hard to do individual work with young
people—we could cost that up and see how we could resource
it, but what is encouraging is that the Mayor's Office is interested
in that sort of development and, obviously, working very closely
with the London Criminal Justice Board, which represents all of
the 32 boroughs.
Q183 Patrick Mercer: Do you believe
that imprisonment or other penalties act as a deterrent to young
people?
Ms Done: There is not very good
evidence that says, absolutely, yes. The evidence that we have
about the impact of custody on young people's thinking, most recent
really, is our 2003 Young people and street crime research. We
did a survey of young people involved in street crime where we
asked them about the things that had the most impact on them,
and custody did come high up the list, but the difficulty with
that is that it is very clear from the rest of the survey that
once a young person has been in custody (and obviously we are
talking in terms of young people carrying knives, quite a lot
of them will have been in custody already) the fear of custody
was gone. I think the other information we have which the MORI
surveys show us very powerfully is that the thing that has most
impact on young people in terms of stopping them committing offending
is being caught, which is about twice as important as the punishment,
and there is a whole list of things like parents feelings, and
so on. So actually being caught is a really important issue, and
that is why the Tackling Knives Action Programme is very much
an element that is very much focused on finding young people who
are carrying knives, because there is a real element amongst young
people of being concerned that they need to protect themselves.
Obviously that is balanced against the risks of them being pulled
into the justice system. If they do not think they will be detected,
then that balance goes the wrong way. So I am afraid it is a balancing
act. I think the custody issue is very complex, because there
is no absolutely good evidence that says that will stop people
carrying knives.
Q184 Martin Salter: You have already
mentioned a little bit about the evaluation that you have had
on the effectiveness of the knife prevention programme. Is there
anything you want to add to that and, secondly, I understand that
you are piloting these schemes through 12 YOTS and funding has
been secured for the pilots until March 2009, but, of course,
it begs the question then, have you actually secured long-term
funding?
Mr Ashford: What I can say is
that we know that around 150 young people have already been through
these programme, and given that the majority of them only started
in the autumn, with the latest just about coming on-stream, it
is still very early days, but that is 150 young people that potentially
would not have had that type of intervention before, which is
very positive. We know anecdotally (and again this is not firm
evidence) that some of the most effective parts of that programme
have been around the work of victim's organisations and victims
who have been describing to young people what it feels like to
be a victim. Again, anecdotally, the other parts of the programme
we know that have been positively received are the kind of medical
information that has been given by primary care trusts to young
people about the effect of stabbings, wounding, et cetera, and
the kind of damage they can do. In terms of funding, you are absolutely
right, funding has only been secured until March 2009. We are
obviously hoping the funding continues, not just for those 12
pilot schemes, but we would also like to see either the schemes
extended much more widely within the knife crime areas or, indeed,
nationally, and another area which we would also like to see an
extension of on this particular work is within the secure estate,
which is not currently covered by this particular programme There
is work going on within certain young people secure units, but
this is not the knife possession crime programme which we have
been developing and which we are evaluating. I am sure, as you
will be aware, we will be seeking funding not to just to continue
these programmes but also to hopefully grow them.
Q185 Martin Salter: So a recommendation
from this Committee that long-term funding be secured would be
welcomed?
Ms Done: And also the custodial
sector as well, which we are working on, but at the moment it
is a matter of resource.
Q186 Bob Russell: We have had evidence
that Youth Offending Team managers are unable to engage in prevention
work because they are committing resources to custodial places
and servicing the criminal justice system. Is that your understanding
as well?
Mr Ashford: That is a very curious
finding actually. I am glad you asked the question. I mentioned
earlier that in terms of development, certainly within the last
three or five years, Youth Offending Teams have been given substantial
new funding and, as a result of that funding, YOTS now tell us,
because they send returns to us about their work loads and their
engagement, that people they commission now engage with around
10,000 young people every year as part of their prevention activity.
Further to that, Youth Offending Teams also work with parents
of young offenders and do that in a preventive manner as well.
We know also that the Youth Offending Teams are now delivering
around 11,000 parenting interventions with the parents of young
people at risk every year. That is a huge and increased workload.
Within that balance of prevention in custody it certainly used
to be the case that there was very little prevention activity
taking place within YOTS, but, as I say, resources had been provided
and I am pretty surprised to hear that statement.
Q187 Bob Russell: So that is not
your understanding and, therefore, the supplementary question
of what is the solution is irrelevant?
Mr Ashford: The solution, we would
say, is to actually maintain that funding. There is never enough
funding. There is never enough resources.
Q188 Bob Russell: Following Mr Salter's
question on a previous line, there is still the need to maintain,
if not increase, resources in this area?
Mr Ashford: That would be very
helpful.
Ms Done: To clarify that, the
current prevention programmes, which are very substantial, funded
by the Home Office through the YJB to YOTS, are a three-year programme.
We are one year through it; another two years to go. Obviously
the really big concern is that when we get to the new CSR period
all that is able to carry on.
Q189 Bob Russell: One year has gone,
but at what stage in the next two years, for consistency, do you
need to know how it is going to roll on?
Ms Done: Within the next 12 months,
because the programmes are very substantial and they have staff
employed on them and you get all the uncertainty that goes with
them. Having said that, I am not suggesting that there is a question
mark over them, but clearly, going into that sort of period, it
is not mainstream funding. If it was, it would not be a concern.
Because it is a three-year programme, a very substantial one,
it has been very successful, and it is absolutely essential, I
suppose what we should be saying to the Home Office and other
Government departments is that it ought to be mainstreamed from
now, from the next time that the funding comes up.
Bob Russell: I am grateful for that?
Q190 Mrs Cryer: In your view, do
you feel that the Government is doing the right things and enough
of the right things to tackle knife crime? You clearly are impressed
by what is going on with the Knife Possession Prevention Programme.
Is there anything else that is going on that you are pleased with,
or are there things that you feel should be ditched because they
are not having any effect?
Ms Done: Probably the only point
I would want to make in conclusion is a point I think you asked
a previous witness about safer school partnerships. As part of
the wider neighbourhood prevention programme, things like safer
school partnerships are really important. You asked about developing
those. The Youth Crime Action Plan, I think, gives a commitment
to enable every school that wants to be a safer schools partnership
to be one, so there is the commitment to do that. I think, seeing
the tackling knives issue as part of this much wider landscape
is really important because on its own---. We do believe these
programmes will probably be effective, but we do not know that
yet, and they cannot possibly be effective outside of a much bigger
programme which identifies young people who need to be given real,
serious attention with their parents early on. If that sort of
work stops or does not happen, then you are going to get more
and more of the problem that we are dealing with. So we see it
very much as a very important part of the wider programme. We
also feel that it is very important that we evaluate properly
all the programme, but particularly the bit we are dealing with,
which is the knife prevention programme, in terms of its impact
on the young people, on the communities and on reoffending and
if it works, great, keep going, if it does not, we need to think
of other ways of approaching it because it is still early days
in this programme.
Chairman: Ms Done, Mr Ashford, thank
you very much for giving evidence. That was most enlightening.
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