Youth crime - an imaginative approach
Posted by Stephen Timms, MP for East Ham, at 14:50, Thu 18 January 2007:
What can we do about youth crime? Everybody worries about it.
It turns out that, in Newham, a great deal is being done. I have just visited Newham's Youth Offending Team to see how the government's strategy for tackling youth crime is being put into action in our area. The most recent inspection rated the Newham team as one of the best in the country.
Newham Youth Offending Team works from a large, airy base in Cumberland Road, Plaistow. It includes police officers, social workers, health workers and representatives from education and housing. It is impressive to see them working together - looking around, you can't spot who comes from which service. My guide was Peter Cook, one of the Team leaders, who joined from the Metropolitan Police because he wanted the chance to help young people before they went off the rails.
Peter is convinced that prevention is the most effective way to tackle youth crime. He stresses the vital importance of early intervention to spot young people heading towards criminality, and steering them onto a different course before it is too late. In Newham, teachers, housing officers and police officers are referring young people they consider 'at risk' to the Team. The Team can then offer help. It seems to be working. First time appearances at Stratford Youth Court have fallen 25% compared to last year. Across London, the fall was only 1%.
Restorative Justice is another example of Newham's team getting it right. The idea is for victims to show an offender the effects of his or her crime, where possible at a face-to-face meeting. For example, a Newham youth stole a car parked in a local street. He thought it would create no real hardship - the insurance company would pay out. However, the car belonged to a nurse, struggling to juggle work and childcare. Losing the car meant she lost her job, because she couldn't get to work on time. When the thief met the nurse he realised how much harm he had caused. It also helped the nurse to tell the thief how big a problem he had caused - and to receive from him a sincere apology.
A Newham teenager, aged thirteen, dropped out of school. Encouraged by new friends, he started breaking in to a neighbour's house and vandalising property. The friends also took advantage of the boy's home, deeply upsetting his mother. The neighbours were forced to move out before he was eventually caught.
Through the Restorative Justice Team, he and his mother met his victims. When he realised the hurt he had caused to his mother as well as to his neighbours, he offered a genuine apology and promised to change his ways. The neighbours accepted the apology.
In Newham, only 9% of offenders receiving 'Restorative Justice'are caught re-offending - compared with a much higher proportion of those who don't receive it - and it helps the victims too.
I came away from my visit very encouraged about the prospects for further progress.
Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP
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