Youth Crime
Intensive Surveillance for Persistent Young Offenders
Persistent young offenders (PYOs) are thought to be responsible for 25% of all youth crime. The Home Office and the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales have launched the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP) to target these young criminals. The scheme will give magistrates in 41 areas of the country an alternative to custodial sentences, whilst PYOs will face hard-hitting community sentences.
ISSPs will be available to PYOs appearing in court who have been charged or convicted of an offence and have:
been charged or warned for an imprisonable offence on four or more separate occasions within the past 12 months
previously received at least one community or custodial penalty.
Offenders serving an ISSP will be subject to intensive surveillance in the community for up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Electronic tagging and voice verification can be used to monitor offenders, as well as intelligence led policing and advocate schemes where young offenders on the ISSP programme are tracked and supervised by dedicated police and Youth Offending Team personnel.
The ISSP will also include reparation, training and education measures designed to punish offenders and tackle offending behaviour. Offenders on the programme could be cleaning up graffiti on vandalised estates, while also undertaking highly structured literacy or numeracy programmes, and where appropriate undergoing drug rehabilitation.
A forerunner to the ISSP piloted in Rotherham between August 2000 and June 2001, placed 27 young offenders onto the programme, having committed between them 160 offences in nine months. While on the programme, the number of offences went down to 47. None of the young people re-offended with a more serious crime and only five re-offended with a crime of equal seriousness - many did not re-offend at all.
The areas in which ISSPs are to be available are:
Phase 1 (announced April 2001)
Birmingham | Blackburn with Darwen |
Blackpool | County Durham |
Coventry/Solihull | Gateshead / S Tyneside / Sunderland |
Greater Manchester | Greenwich / Lewisham / Southwark |
Gwent (Blaenau Gwent Caerphilly / Monmouthshire Torfaen / Newport) | Lancashire |
Leicester/ Leicestershire | Newham |
Nottingham | North East Wales |
Oxfordshire | Peterborough |
South Yorkshire (Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield) | Staffordshire |
Stoke | Suffolk |
Thames (Camden, Hackney, Islington, Tower Hamlets) | West Mercia (Hereford and Worcestershire, Telford Shropshire & The Wrekin) |
Phase 2 schemes (announced July 2001)
Bradford | Brent |
Bristol | Calderdale/ Kirklees |
Cambridgeshire | Kent/ Medway |
Knowsley/ Sefton/ St Helens | Lambeth/ Wandsworth |
Leeds | Liverpool |
Luton | Newcastle/ N Tyneside/ Northumberland |
N Yorks/ York | South Wales (Bridgend, Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Swansea, Vale of Glamorgan) |
Tees Valley (Darlington, Hartlepool, S Tees, Stockton) | Wakefield |
Wessex | West London (Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Westminster |
Wirral |
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For further information on the ISSP scheme, contact
Paul BadhamsSupport
Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP)
Youth Justice Board for England and Wales
3rd Floor South
11 Carteret Street
London
SW1H 9DL
Tel: 020 7271 3082
Tel: 020 7271 3033 (switchboard)
Fax: 020 7271 3247
Email: paul.badhams2@yjb.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.youth-justice-board.gov.uk
Practitioners Portal: www.youth-justice-board.gov.uk/PractitionersPortal/PreventionAndInterventions/ISSP/
Last update: Wednesday, September 17, 2008