Report calls on Youth Justice Board to hold local authorities to account

The Youth Justice Board must immediately take full advantage of the legal powers and levers it has to hold local authorities and providers of custodial and community sentences to account, a review has concluded.

Describing these powers and levers as “substantial”, the review – led by Dame Sue Street – said the YJB should use them “with legal advice as needed, to ensure that its service level standards are set, and met”.

The report also called on the YJB to work with central and local government to clarify the role of local authority children's services in preventing youth crime.

“They have a vital role to play in preventing young people most at risk, for example children in care, children of offenders and children excluded from school, from being drawn into the criminal justice system, and ensuring effective resettlement for those leaving custody,” it said.

Other major recommendations in the report include:

• More joint commissioning of prevention programmes across children's and youth justice services for young people, targeted at those most at risk of youth crime
• The YJB needs to further emphasis and publicise its role in protecting the public from youth crime
• More significant involvement of the Home Office in the YJB, which is currently sponsored by the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Children, Schools and Families
• There should be distinctive custodial provision for young offenders “across the whole estate with standards set by the YJB and open to provision by the public, private and voluntary sectors”, and
• League tables on the performance of comparable youth offending teams, including indicators such as the reoffending rates of young offenders.

Dame Sue Street said progress was being made in reducing youth crime and that the YJB deserved credit for this progress. But she added that the UK still locks up more children than any other Western European country, public confidence in the system is low, individual cases cause public and media concern, and reoffending rates are high.

She added: “After twelve years, the Youth Justice Board now needs to build on its success, take a firmer grip of its responsibilities, and provide clearer direction and leadership. The current leadership has already grasped the scale of this challenge with the full support of the board.

“I should also like to see more accountability by local authorities for prevention work with children at risk of criminality.”