Youth Justice News

Abstract

Perhaps the most significant feature of the youth justice system in England and Wales over the past decade is the extent to which it has contracted. Drawing on statistics published by the Youth Justice Board, a report published by Crest Advisory, a criminal justice consultancy, in November 2019, notes that, between March 2008 and March 2018, the number of proven offences committed by children fell from 277,986 to 77,349, a reduction of 75 per cent. There have been declines across all offence types, but they are particularly marked for less serious offences: recorded of incidents theft and handing stolen goods, for example, fell by 85 per cent over the period and criminal damage by 81 per cent. (The report in fact cites the highest decline as being for breach of statutory orders, at 87 per cent, but the extent of this reduction is likely to be explicable, at least in part, as a function of shifts in recording practice since breach of a community order or custodial licence is not formally a new offence.) By contrast, the decrease for violence against the person and sexual offences was substantially more modest, at 63 and 25 per cent, respectively. Knife and offensive weapons offences display a slightly different picture with a steep decline to 2014, followed by annual rises in each of the subsequent years; overall however, in 2018, the level of such offences was 30 per cent lower than in 2009 despite the recent increases. The report points out that these headline figures have been matched by a similar pattern across each stage of the youth justice system: arrests of children fell by 78 per cent between 2008 and 2018; the number of children entering the system for the first time (so-called first time entrants [FTEs]) by 86 per cent; youth cautions by 91 per cent; and the population of the custodial estate for children by 70 per cent. This latter contrasts with an 8 per cent rise in the adult prison population over the equivalent period. While the direction of travel is evident across the whole of England and Wales, geographical variation remains considerable. Thus, the arrest rate for children in the year