Written evidence from Transition to Adulthood
Alliance (PB 46)
ABOUT THE
TRANSITION TO
ADULTHOOD ALLIANCE
1. The Transition to Adulthood (T2A) Alliance
aims to raise awareness of the distinct needs of young adults,
aged 18-24, in the criminal justice system and to secure policy
change to improve their lives. Convened by the Barrow Cadbury
Trust, its membership encompasses academics, campaigning organisations
and practitioners, including Addaction, Catch22, the Centre for
Crime and Justice Studies, Clinks, the Criminal Justice Alliance,
the Howard League for Penal Reform, Nacro, the Prince's Trust,
the Prison Reform Trust, Revolving Doors Agency, the Young Foundation,
Young Minds and Young People in Focus.
2. The T2A Alliance launched a consultation document
in July, "A New Start: Young Adults in the Criminal Justice
System"[42]
which proposed 21 policy recommendations. During a three month
consultation period, views were sought from politicians, policy
makers and practitioners. Over 300 individuals and organisations
contributed to the process, including statutory and voluntary
groups, young people and ex-offenders themselves. This consultation
culminated in the "Young Adult Manifesto",[43]
launched in November 2009 calling for 10 pragmatic policy changes
for this age group. The Alliance also works with practitioners
and statutory bodies to raise awareness of the distinct needs
of young adults and to provide support and guidance for them.
ABOUT THE
T2A PILOT PROGRAMMES
3. The Barrow Cadbury Trust has established three
pilots to test different approaches to improving services and
support for young adults in the criminal justice system. In 2009,
the Trust set up pilots in London, delivered by St Giles Trust,
in Worcestershire, delivered by Youth Support Services (YSS),
and in Birmingham, delivered by Staffordshire and West Midlands
Probation Service. These pilots run for three years and will receive
a formative evaluation by Oxford University's Centre for Criminology,
and an outcome-based evaluation by young people's charity Catch22.
4. The Birmingham Pilot focuses on 17-24 year
olds with medium to low needs, specifically providing assistance
with accommodation, employment, relationships and substance misuse.
Support includes advocacy, advice and mentoring both in custody
and the community, as well as additional support to motivate the
young adults to access appropriate interventions.
5. The Worcestershire pilot offers a flexible,
community based, one to one support and mentoring project using
paid staff and local volunteers. The project embeds the principles
of service user involvement and is clearly aligned to and supported
by Probation, YOS, Youth Service, Connexions, Children's Services,
Police and Prison to promote new practice and to shape local policy.
6. The London Pilot engages with offenders in
custody and supports them upon release into Southwark and Croydon.
The service is delivered by qualified ex offenders and comprises
of mentoring, motivational work, attitudinal work, combined with
competent practical support in areas such as housing, benefits
and employment, training and education.
INTRODUCTION
7. The T2A Alliance welcomes this important inquiry
by the Justice Select Committee into the role of probation services;
this inquiry is of key significance at a time of great upheaval
within the system alongside tightened budgets. The Alliance particularly
welcomes the remit of the inquiry into to the role of the probation
service in handling different groups of offenders appropriately,
particularly young adults. Our response will focus on: commissioning
of probation services; magistrates and judges; the role of the
private and voluntary sector, probation service ability to cope
with the replacement of short custodial sentences and the introduction
of restorative justice and the needs of young adults.
COMMISSIONING OF
PROBATION SERVICES
8. The T2A Alliance does not have a view on who
should deliver probation services. However, through the Alliance
practice and policy work, we would argue that any commissioning
arrangement should reflect the following principles:
— Take
account of the various transitions of young people involved in
criminal justice and respond appropriately. The transition from
youth offending service to probation is often poorly administered
and details are not passed from one service to another. Smart
commissioning could bridge the gap across the services and provide
a more seamless transition, commissioning services that work across
age brackets or involve several agencies together.
— As
well as polling resources across traditional age barriers, commissioning
should facilitate multi-agency working across agencies both inside
and outside the criminal justice system. MAPPA has been shown
to provide a good model for pooling resources across agencies
to achieve good outcomes. The total place pilots also offer a
promising model for more innovative commissioning that focuses
on shared outcomes.
— Represent
realistic investment in order to support good outcomes—immediate
cost savings are valuable but not as valuable as long-term savings
through reduced reoffending.
— Be
sufficiently flexible to allow the provider to innovate and respond
both to local needs and to the needs of individuals they are working
with.
— Reflect
the comprehensive research evidence on the importance of building
relationships as key to desistance and facilitating appropriate
case loads so that these relationships can be built.
— Reflect
the evidence on maturity and the "age crime curve" in
relation to desistance.
— Involve
offenders and their families, across the various parts of the
criminal justice system.[44]
Are magistrates and judges able to utilize fully
the requirements that can be attached to community sentences?
How effectively are these being delivered?
9. Young adults often have high levels of complex
needs yet the criminal justice is failing to cope with these through
traditional justice interventions. For example, Probation officers
point out that not all twelve requirements of Community Orders
are readily available, the two most commonly cited as missing
being alcohol treatment and mental health requirements[45]—both
identified as key needs of young adult offenders. The Sainsbury
Centre for Mental Health also identified serious gaps in provision
for the mental health requirement.[46]
Mental health treatment requirements are used in less than one
percent of Orders, despite evidence showing that nearly half of
all offenders could benefit from this option.
10. Community sentences are proving disproportionately
challenging for young adults to complete. Currently, young adults
often receive the most punitive community sentences. Curfews,
banned activities and unpaid work are common, making it harder
not to breach the order, but lack the necessary support for young
adults to fulfil the requirements. As a result of a breach, there
are rapidly rising numbers of young adults ending up in prison.[47]
At present, limited supervision and the inflexible nature of requirements
are setting up young adults to fail.
11. For young women community sentences requirements
can be even more difficult to comply with. In taking evidence
for our Green Paper, A New Start, the T2A Alliance heard
from one policy panel that some women with chaotic lives often
fail to attend unpaid work requirement days simply because they
are unable to arrange for childcare. Community sentences need
to work better for vulnerable women with chaotic lives, childcare
responsibilities and debt or financial worries. Gender specific
provision, especially for women with mental health problems, should
be available in the community. Research into the Community Order
and Suspended Sentence Order for women found that "style
and content of the sentence and the way it is managed are
at least as important for women as the form and type of requirements"[48]
More account, therefore, should be taken of the needs of young
women in serving their sentence—specifically, their poor
self-esteem, mental health problems and being the primary carer
for a family.
12. The T2A Alliance further recommends that
Community sentences be supported by resourcing that ensures that
all 12 requirements introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2003
are available to the courts and that there are not significant
waiting periods before an offender can begin an Order.
13. We also recommend that more use should be
made of existing sentences to treat alcohol misuse and mental
health problems with the necessary expansion of treatment provision,
as proposed in the Bradley Review (published in 2009).
14. Finally many of these support needs are difficult
to meet through a "one size fits all" adult justice
system that treats all offenders over 18 as fully mature adults.
The T2A Alliance has recommended that the government consider
how maturity and developmental stage could be taken into consideration
in the sentencing of young adults. We recommend a UK pilot
based on maturity assessments and drawing on practice in Germany
for sentencing those aged 18-21 (or even up to 24) under juvenile
law, depending on the nature of the crime and level of maturity.
15. Research by Matrix found that diversion from
trial under adult law to trial under juvenile law following maturity
assessment is likely to produce a lifetime cost saving to society
of £420 per offender, and that the costs of maturity assessments
are likely to be paid back within five years of implementation.[49]
What role should the private and voluntary sector
play?
16. Our pilots have shown the benefits of support
delivered outside the traditional boundaries of probation—both
outside the physical building but also outside the constraints
of a model focused on risk and protection. The Oxford University
Centre for Criminology's interim evaluation of the T2A pilots
found that many T2A service users appreciated the role played
by T2A workers in addition to probation.
17. There already exists a body of literature
on the distinct qualities of the voluntary sector. However, in
terms of criminal justice interventions, the voluntary sector
may be better equipped and able to include the community's voice
in the way services are designed and delivered, offer participation
of service users, and to work more closely with offenders and
their families. The T2A Alliance believes that the consistent
and meaningful involvement of the community, offenders, and their
families, across the various parts of the criminal justice system
is essential to improving it,[50]
in the same way that contact between prisoners and their families
is widely recognised as a significant factor in reducing reoffending.[51]
18. Equally, ex-offenders need to make strong
links with statutory and voluntary agencies in the community who
can support them after release from prison or after their community
sentence is completed. Planning for resettlement should start
from the moment a person enters custody and must include the voice
of the young person and their families. The government should
enhance the role of ex-offenders in providing resettlement support,
and should encourage prisons to allow ex-offenders to volunteer
in prisons (as demonstrated by St Giles Trust's Through the Gates
programme, and the Prince's Trust's 1:2:1 projects).[52]
Does the probation service have the capacity to
cope with a move away from short custodial sentences?
19. Short custodial sentences of less than twelve
months are responsible for the highest rates of reoffending among
all age groups, with approximately 60% reconvicted within a year
in 2008. In that year, the average sentence length for young adult
offenders was 11.6 months, and the majority of people sentenced
to this length of time in prison had not committed a violent offence.
The T2A Alliance therefore recommends the abolition of the use
of short sentences of less than six months for young adults convicted
of non-violent offences. However, this must be premised on the
principle of justice reinvestment where cost savings from a reduced
prison population are invested into community provision that addresses
the specific needs of young adults and the causes of their offending.
This would require the expansion of community-based drug, alcohol
and mental health treatment tailored to young adults.
20. Research for T2A by Matrix found that diversion
from custody to community sentences via changes in sentencing
guidelines is likely to produce a lifetime cost saving to society
of more than £1,032 per offender. The costs of changing sentencing
guidelines are likely to be paid back within three years of implementation.[53]
Could probation make more use of restorative justice?
21. The T2A Alliance fully endorses the use of
restorative justice with young adult offenders. The Prison Reform
Trust's recent research on restorative justice in Northern Ireland
has also shown that diverting young people into restorative solutions
can be highly effective. Among young people under 18 in Northern
Ireland, for example, 40% who had gone through the restorative
justice conferencing order committed another crime within a year,
compared to 71% of those who had been put in prison.[54]
We welcome the Justice Minister's recent commitment to maximize
restorative justice opportunities throughout the criminal justice
system (22 July 2010).
22. T2A
commissioned Matrix Evidence to conduct cost benefit research
into the cost benefit of diverting young adults from community
sentences into pre-court restorative justice conference schemes
(following a police triage service.) Matrix found that it is likely
to produce a lifetime cost saving to society of almost £7,050
per offender. The costs of RJ conferencing are likely to be paid
back within the first year of implementation. During the course
of two parliaments (10 years), implementation of such a scheme
would be likely to lead to a total net benefit to society during
this period of over £1 billion.[55]
Does the probation service handle different groups
of offenders appropriately, eg women, young adults, black and
minority ethnic people?
23. The probation service, and the various agencies
that comprise the criminal justice system, are failing to meet
the needs of young adult offenders. Despite making up less than
10% of the population, young adults represent a third of people
sentenced to custody each year,[56]
take up a third of the probation service's caseload and commit
an estimated third of all crime.[57]
Young adults have some of the highest reoffending rates of all
groups in the system. The high reoffending rates and disproportionate
involvement of young adults in trouble with the law demonstrates
the need for a new approach.
24. In addition to their disproportionate involvement
in crime, a further reason for a distinct approach is that young
adults have needs and characteristics, which are different from
those of the general adult population. Many young adults experience
levels of emotional maturity similar to that of younger teenagers
and those who have had more difficult childhoods take longer to
mature than those who have had a more positive upbringing. These
needs and characteristics are set out in detail in "Universities
of Crime: Young Adults, the Criminal Justice System and Social
Policy", a report from the T2A Alliance. This report is enclosed
as supplementary material to this evidence.
25. The Oxford Centre for Criminology Interim
evaluation of T2A pilots highlighted promising practice for working
with young adults after prison or whilst on a community sentence
that the T2A Alliance would like to see implemented more widely.
These features were highlighted as valuable by service users themselves
and included: working intensively with young adults during transitions;
achieving diversion, resettlement, desistance and better life-chances;
engaging with diversity, difference and the hard-to-reach and
service-user involvement.[58]
26. These four elements are difficult for probation
service to implement and achieve given difficulties previously
mentioned in this submission - particularly that of high caseloads,
limited time with service users, focus on risk management rather
than improving the life chances and resettlement of ex-offenders,
and finally an approach that does not give sufficient weight to
participation of service users and their families.
T2A PILOTS AND
RELATIONSHIPS
The T2A pilots provide a holistic approach to working
with young adults recognising the difficulties they face during
their transition to adulthood and the additional support they
require. Their way of working fits with the conclusion of France
and Homel that "what young people value is not programmes
but a supportive relationship with a non-judgemental adult who
is able to help them navigate their way through difficult circumstances."[59]
Some examples of the support received by young adults on the pilots
are: helping young adults attend their appointments; assisting
the young person in signing on to Job Seekers Allowance; helping
to claim housing benefit; accessing voluntary services for additional
support, such as alcohol problems; family mediation and working
with the young adult on budgeting and essential life skills.
27. The T2A Alliance therefore recommends that
intensive support is made available for every young adult (aged
18-24) leaving custody regardless of their length of sentence.
Regular contact with prisoners needs to begin before release,
and every young adult who requests it should have access to through-the-gate
mentoring support upon release. Mentors can play the role of significant
adult, in the absence of family and help provide extra support
in accessing employment, training, housing and other needs identified.
September 2010
6 42 5The report
is enclosed as supplementary evidence. Back
43
The report is enclosed as supplementary evidence. Back
44
A New Start, p.14 Back
45
Cabinet Office, Short Study on Women Offenders, May 2009, p.16 Back
46
Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (2009) A Missed Opportunity:
Community Sentences and the Mental Health Treatment Requirement Back
47
Partridge, S., Harris, J., Abram, M. and Scholes, A. (2005) The
Intensive Control and Change Programme Pilots: A Study of Implementation
in the First Year London:
Home Office - cited in The Use of the
Community Order and the Suspended Sentence Order for Young Adult
Offenders, p.1 Back
48
Patel, S. and Stanley, S. The Community order and Suspended
Sentence Order for Women, CCJS, May 2008 Back
49
Matrix Evidence, Economic Analysis of interventions for young
adult offenders, November 2009 Back
50
A New Start, p.14 Back
51
Action for Prisoners' Families, (revised May 2010) Three Year
Strategy, 2009-2012, p. 1 Back
52
A New Start, p. 38 Back
53
Matrix Evidence, Economic Analysis of interventions for young
adult offenders, November 2009 Back
54
Prison Reform Trust, Making Amends: restorative justice in Northern
Ireland, October 2009 Back
55
Matrix Evidence, Economic Analysis of interventions for young
adult offenders, November 2009 Back
56
Offender Management Caseload Statistics, Ministry of Justice,
2007, Table 6.6, p. 64. Back
57
Bowles and Praditpyo, Commission on Young Adults and the Criminal
Justice System: Summary of Costs and Benefits, Centre for
Criminal Justice Economics and Psychology, University of York. Back
58
Oxford Centre for Criminology, Interim Report: User Perspectives
on T2A Pilots, May 2010 Back
59
France and Homel, 2006, p.9 Back
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