Years of success at tackling youth crime will be threatened
unless the Government maintains funding for tackling and
preventing youth offending, the Local Government Association says
today.
The LGA, which represents 370 councils in England and Wales, is
concerned that councils have still not received their youth
justice grant allocations for 2018/19, despite having to set
budgets within the next two weeks. This is making planning
services to support young people and help keep them out of the
youth justice system extremely difficult.
This follows a significant reduction in government funding for
youth offending teams (YOTs) over recent years, from £145 million
in 2010/11 to just £72 million in 2017/18. These reductions
included a £9 million in-year cut in 2015, and a further 12 per
cent budget cut for 2016/17.
Council YOTs have achieved huge success in working with and
supporting young people to prevent them getting involved in youth
crime, with an 85 per cent drop in First Time Entrants to the
youth justice system and 74 per cent fewer young people in the
average custodial population over the last decade.
The number of youth cautions handed out dropped by more than
100,000, or 90 per cent, in the same period.
However, the latest Ministry of Justice figures reveal an 11 per
cent rise in offences involving knives or offensive weapons by
young people, compared with a 10 per cent reduction for adults
since March 2012.
The LGA says that cuts to the Government’s youth justice grant
mean councils are having to make up more of the funding for YOTs
from their own budgets.
However, faced with significant rises in demand for urgent child
protection work and a £2 billion funding gap facing children’s
services by 2020, councils are being forced to divert the limited
funding they have left away from preventative work, including
YOTs and youth work, into services to protect children who are at
immediate risk of harm.
Cllr , Chair of the LGA’s
Children and Young People Board, said:
“Youth offending teams have an outstanding track record in
working with children and young people to stop them coming into
the youth justice system, but they’ve been victims of their own
success. As the numbers of young offenders has fallen, so has the
grant from central government to continue the preventative work
that caused the fall in the first place.
“Increases in knife crime amongst young people highlights the
challenge still facing youth offending teams, and we’re worried
that cutting back on funding risks undermining the progress
that’s been made over the last decade.
“Councils must be given the resources they need to work with
young people and prevent their involvement in crime in the first
place, rather than simply picking up the pieces after offences
have been committed.
“But years of cuts mean that the youth justice grant now makes up
only around a third of funding for YOTs. With council children’s
services budgets increasingly focused on those children in the
most urgent need of protection, YOTs are struggling to access the
funding necessary to run vital, and successful, prevention and
intervention schemes.
“With council budgets being finalised in the coming weeks, youth
offending teams need to know that they can rely on the same level
of grant funding as last year, at the very least, to continue
their work to keep young people out of the youth justice system.
“This is made all the more urgent given that last year, the Chief
Inspector of Prisons found that none of the youth custody
establishments inspected in England and Wales was safe to hold
children and young people.
“Councils want to do all they can to keep young people out of
potentially dangerous institutions and divert them away from
damaging situations so that they can live positive, fulfilling
lives, but high quality youth work and targeted intervention
schemes cost money, and that is in increasingly short supply.
“Government must commit to the futures of our young people by
maintaining funding for the vital work that can put young people
on the right track and help to transform lives.”
