Youth Crime Action Plan
The youth crime action plan calls for more work to stop children from getting involved in criminality. It calls for cross-governmental work on 3 tracks: get youths off the streets late at night, provide intensive support for troubled families and levy tougher, more visible community payback sentences for young people convicted of crime.
Title: Youth Crime Action Plan
Author: HM Government
Number of pages: 74
Date published: July 2008
Availability: View full report
Although, overall rates of crimes committed by juvenile offenders has held steady, each year around 100,000 people between the ages of 10 and 17 enter the criminal justice system for the first time.
The new action plan aims to reduce this rate by one-fifth by 2020.
It plans to accomplish this through a comprehensive package of tough enforcement and intensive prevention measures, as well as more support for parents.
It offers support for the most troubled families, as well as an intensive programme for areas with the worst records for youth crime.
Key points
Included in the action plan are:
- better prevention and support for victims
- expansion of family intervention projects to 20,000 families
- increasing the proportion of ASBOs accompanied by a parenting order
- expanding safer schools partnerships
- increasing the number of youth centres and other activities at times when young people are likely to offend, including Friday and Saturday nights
- making permanent exclusion from school an automatic trigger to a comprehensive assessment of needs
- expanding family nurse partnerships
- use of innovative methods to support young victims and improving support to witnesses
Tougher enforcement
The plan also calls for
- tougher enforcement of legislation to remove at-risk children from the streets late at night
- more work to tackle anti-social behaviour and underage drinking
- new police enforcement tactics to ensure visible patrols during after-school hours
- basing teams of youth workers and ex-gang members on the streets in troubled areas to deal with groups of young people involved in crime and disorder.
More targeted policing
In addition, the plan calls for more targeted policing, as well as:
- better cooperation between government departments to identify and target prolific offenders
- giving communities the chance to decide what type of reparation they want young people on community sentences to do
- requiring young offenders to work out their community sentences on Friday and Saturday nights
More involvement from local authorities
In order to reduce rates of re-offending, the plan calls for:
- local authorities to fund and commission the education of young offenders in custody
- a more comprehensive package of support for young people leaving custody
- access to suitable accommodation and health services for all young offenders leaving custody
Getting a copy
View Youth Crime Action Plan on the Home Office website.
Last update: Wednesday, July 16, 2008