Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

The Youth Justice Board and the Home Office have jointly initiated a campaign to recruit five thousand volunteers to join youth offender panels. From April 2002 these panels will make contracts with young first-time offenders and their families to make a schedule of activities and restrictions which will be aimed at making reparations for the crime committed and prevent re-offending. Anyone considering volunteering to be a community panel member should call the Youth Justice Board’s recruitment hotline:

North: 0191 497 9332

South: 01483 215350

Or log on to youth-justice-board.gov.uk/YouthOffenderPanels/

Youth offender panels will be a new part of the Criminal Justice System available nationwide from 1 April 2002. Youth courts will refer young offenders (aged 10-17) to a youth offender panel if the offender has pleaded guilty and been convicted for the first time (unless the offence is too serious or an absolute discharge or hospital order has been made). The panels will consist of two volunteers and one member of the local youth offending team.

The panel will meet with the young person, with their family, and where possible with the victim of the crime to draw up a contract with the offender. A typical contract would include a range of activities and restrictions aimed at dealing with the offender, aimed at repairing the harm done to the victim and to the local community and aimed at preventing re-offending.

5,000 men and women of all backgrounds are needed to volunteer to support this system. It is hoped that volunteers may be found from all parts of the community. Full training and ongoing support will be available to volunteers. No-one should feel that they’re ‘not the right sort of person’ as the volunteers should be representative of the full range of the local community.

The volunteers will have a major role in making young offenders face up to what they have done and to make reparations for their crimes. The panel will also seek to take action to ensure that the individual does not re-offend. A wide range of forms of reparation will be available to panels, including (but by no means restricted to)

• family counselling

• victim awareness programmes

• drugs and alcohol rehabilitation

• education & training

• offender group monitoring

Youth offender panels have been piloted in six areas around the country: Blackburn, Cardiff, Nottingham, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Swindon and West London. The Home Office’s Research Development and Statistics Directorate have published two interim reports on these pilots which may be found on the RDS website by following these links:

The Introduction of Referral Orders into the Youth Justice System: First interim report 320Kb, published January 2001

The Introduction of Referral Orders into the Youth Justice System: Second interim report 1.2Mb, published September 2001