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Central government and local authorities spent £800 million in 2009-10 dealing with youth crime, primarily through the Youth Justice Board nationally and Youth Offending Teams locally. Ten per cent was spent on trying to prevent young people becoming offenders. Most of the rest was incurred in dealing with offending behaviour, including over £300 million on custody, which is used to deal with 3% of offences. The National Audit Office has estimated that the total costs to the UK economy of offending by young people could be up to £11 billion a year.
In recent years, the Youth Justice Board has been effective in leading reform within the youth justice system and diverting resources to the offenders most at risk of committing future crimes. Since 2000, the number of young people entering the youth justice system, the number held in custody and the amount of reoffending committed by young people, have all fallen. Youth custody, which is expensive relative to other ways of dealing with young offenders, has fallen during a period when the number of adults in custody has continued to rise. This is a particularly noteworthy achievement, and one in which the Board has played a central part.
Some areas of difficulty remain, however, particularly with more serious offenders. Young people are now more likely to reoffend after a serious community penalty than they were in 2000 and three in four of those leaving custody will reoffend in the following year. Dealing with these offenders is difficult, but it has been made more so by poor quality assessments and sentence planning in one third of cases, together with a lack of research into the relative effectiveness of different programmes. This also makes it particularly difficult to decide which activities to retain, and which to cut, following the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review.
The Ministry has decided to abolish the Youth Justice Board, though it did not take into account the Board's performance in making this decision. We have some concerns that reorganization at this time could impact on building on the progress achieved to date. Following the abolition, it will be the role of the Ministry to maintain the successes that the Board has achieved in its oversight of the youth justice system, and to address effectively areas where more needs to be done.
On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General[1] we took evidence from the Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board on the operation of the youth justice system in England and Wales.
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