Oral evidence: Young adult offenders, HC 397Tuesday 10 November 2015
Oral evidence, 10 November 2015.
Witnesses
Poppy Harrison, Youth Justice Board, Hannah Doughty, Association of Youth Offending Team Managers, and Colin Allars, National Probation Service, gave evidence.
Chair
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for coming along and giving evidence to us. Would you like to introduce yourselves before we go into the questions? You have heard the format, having been sitting in during the previous session, so that will perhaps sharpen things up a bit.
Colin Allars
I am Colin Allars. I am the director of the National Probation Service and responsible for the National Probation Service within England.
Poppy Harrison
I am Poppy Harrison and I am head of placements and safeguarding at the Youth Justice Board.
Hannah Doughty
I am Hannah Doughty and I am a member of the Association of YOT Managers.
Chair
Thank you. You have heard a good deal of the discussion we had earlier about maturity and where young adults sit within that continuum between young offenders and adult offenders. Is that something you are conscious of as a concept within the work of your respective organisations and how easy, for example, is it to be understood by probation practitioners? Is a distinction drawn between those things and maturity itself? How do each of you deal with that within your organisations?
Colin Allars
From a probation point of view, the concept of maturity certainly is understood. In preparation for coming here today, I made a point of talking to a number of front-line staff, just to ask, “What does this mean for you? What is your thinking?” The immediate response was, “Yes, well understood. We have read the research; we have seen the guidance; we understand that there is a difference between physical maturity and maturity in terms of impact on criminality.” So it is well understood. We are seeking to work increasingly with partners. Hopefully, that will become evident in the evidence we collectively give. Certainly, from a National Probation Service point of view, we are putting in place measures now to strengthen, we hope, the service that we can give and the expertise that we can bring into that partnership at local level.
Poppy Harrison
If I can try to unpick the question so that I make sure I answer it, in the youth justice system we are very conscious of issues around maturity. We are also very conscious of the transition point between the youth justice system and the adult justice system, recognising that that is not only happening within a criminal justice context but in all sorts of other services. We are also trying to maintain, which is probably a bit of a challenge, the protected services that exist for children in the youth justice system.
Chair
Is the transition point, incidentally, the right one, do you think?
Poppy Harrison
You mentioned earlier that there is an artificial line. I wonder whether there would always be an artificial line wherever you put it; so I am not sure that I can give you a distinct answer. But what I would say is that at the point of transition we want to make sure that information gets shared to ensure that the particular needs and risks that children have are transferred over when they are managed in the probation service later.
Hannah Doughty
From a youth offending team perspective, I would say that there are a lot of assessments around maturity levels from the time that young people come in to see us until the time they leave. There are also a large number of young people, if it is felt that they are not mature, that youth offending teams will continue to work with past that transition point to make sure that all that information is transferred over to the National Probation Service or the CRCs to ensure that they are taken account of.
Chair
Ms Rimmer, would you like to come in on screening and assessment at the beginning of the process?
Marie Rimmer
Are probation assessments really fit for purpose in taking into account desistance literature, maturity and neuro‑disabilities?
Hannah Doughty
I can only really speak about youth offending and risk assessments. We take into account and look at children’s mental and emotional health, and we would put all that information within assessments. That would be clearly marked. Those assessments would be passed over to the probation service to ensure that probation workers had all the information that was collated while people were youths.
Marie Rimmer
Can any of you comment on neuro‑disabilities and the fitness for purpose of the probation service now?
Colin Allars
I would not claim to be an expert. Certainly, all the information that comes together forms part of, effectively, the bundle that the probation officer has at the point when he or she puts together advice to the court in that particular part of the process. They will identify any particular characteristics or issues that have been raised there, which would include advice from health professionals and so on or from other colleagues in the system.
Poppy Harrison
It might be worth mentioning, and you may well be aware, that the current assessment framework for children in the criminal justice system has been redesigned and we are in the process of rolling out AssetPlus, which is the new assessment framework. We are obviously at a stage where it is too early to say whether this is the panacea that we perhaps hope it will be and whether there are lessons that can be carried over, but we can say that there are two issues. One is that neuro‑disability is something that is specifically built into that assessment framework. It previously did not exist within the old assessment framework, but it is something that will be available for those who transition into the adult justice system in the future. The other point is that in the old assessment framework for children there was a very clear scoring mechanism, which was about risk of reoffending. That had a tendency to impact on assessments around children’s broader needs that were not linked to reoffending. The new assessment framework takes away that scoring so that you are looking at need and reoffending as being different, although very closely linked, issues. That should also help in terms of the transition into adult services, we hope.
Marie Rimmer
What could the National Offender Management Service learn from the Lord Harris review, and will that be considered by yourselves?
Colin Allars
The recommendations from Lord Harris’s review are being looked at alongside the review that has been done of the youth offending estate. That is still actively under consideration. I do not know where that will get to. The MOJ has made clear that it is still considering that and will publish its findings in due course. There clearly are issues within there in terms of vulnerability and so on that we do need to learn from and ensure that we take forward, but it is still actively under consideration. I do not know what the final outcome will be.
Hannah Doughty
I wonder, as well, if there are some lessons to be learned from youth offending teams and the multi‑agency nature of them. The fact is that you have a lot of people putting information within assessments; you have somebody co‑ordinating that case, so if you have things like mental health services that information is going through. There is probably greater access to mental health services within most YOTs; it is different nationally, depending on the relationships and how that works. There is an issue about how to engage young people, because the mental health service is voluntary—you cannot force them to go, and that is always an issue. There are possibly things to be learned about the assessment of vulnerabilities. Youth offending teams are very good at looking at wider vulnerabilities and exactly what has happened to that young person, and why they have reached the point that they have come into that system. I would like to go back to whether the transition point is correct. That is dependent on the young people, and there is a hole there between those 18 to 21-year-olds and which service they perhaps should see.
Marie Rimmer
Which aspects of the youth justice approach to the assessment and management of vulnerabilities could be adopted by probation services for young adults?
Hannah Doughty
It is very much about the assessment and looking at how you would risk that—what factors are positive factors that you build on and the ones that are negative. The thing about youth justice is that with those complex cases—the very vulnerable young people—because there are lower caseloads within youth justice, there is more time spent with those young people. That is possibly why they are more successful and we have reduced reoffending.
Dr Huq
Youth does seem like an elastic category. Is it when you pay tax? Is it when you pay half fare on the bus? Is it age of consent? It is an NPS question, really. Probation practitioners seem to be inconsistent in applying different approaches to young adults and different measures of different age ranges. How would you define young adulthood?
Colin Allars
We obviously work within the frameworks that are there at the moment, in that the age cut-off is the starting point. What you set out is absolutely fair in that in the past there have been differential approaches. Up until the current arrangements, up until about two years ago, probation support to youth offending teams came from the 35 probation trusts; they were arm’s length, non‑departmental bodies. When you look at the way that they operated, the support—be that through financial assistance or through expertise—was highly variable. The relationships at local level did vary. They were normally built on local working relationships, but they did vary. Now, with the National Probation Service, we have an opportunity to look at best practice and, through that, to try and ensure that we have some continuity of provision from across the—
Dr Huq
So what numerical age—
Colin Allars
We are working on 18 being the current cut-off point, but, just to complete the point about the NPS, at the moment we have just made some proposals to our staff, and we are working with our partners on this. We will second people for a three-year period; we will build in some expertise and some continuity there, and we can train those people accordingly. In future, we will be looking for people who have been to the youth offending teams and moved back into mainstream probation so that expertise comes back into mainstream probation. So it is a properly managed flow of expertise that goes into those.
Dr Huq
It is zero to 18 now.
Colin Allars
Yes.
Dr Huq
What about the other two bodies? Do you have a definition?
Poppy Harrison
To continue on from Hannah’s point, the law in lots of different areas, whether it is in relation to looked‑after children, the justice system or sentencing arrangements, points to lots of different ages as being the age of young adulthood or childhood. There are certain services there that services and professionals need to take advantage of to make sure that those people with those needs get what they need. The point, really, is about moving away from the focus of a defined age but looking at the flexibility that exists within the law. We have those confines that say that up to the age of 24 you are entitled to leaving care services if you are in full‑time education, but in the justice system, for example, the youth justice system covers up to the age of 18 and there is nothing to stop a youth offending team continuing to supervise or to manage cases beyond the age of 18, if that is deemed to be the most appropriate thing for that particular individual. It is about empowering professionals to be able to make those judgments and to manage the cases within the full framework that exists for them, if that makes sense.
Hannah Doughty
There are also resource implications, though, with some of this. There are in‑year cuts coming already to youth offending teams, we know. Some people have had no probation staff seconded when it was the probation trust. They are looking at that, but there is likely to be a cut in probation staff seconded. The youth offending teams would say that three years is a very short period for a secondment when you look at the training that is needed for those staff around learning things about young people and children, working with young sex offenders, that kind of thing. We would be looking to encourage the probation service to extend that and look at that to be a longer term, perhaps four or five years.
Dr Huq
On the maturity discussion we were having in the last session, which you all heard, the MOJ T2A guidance says that taking account of maturity is supposed to be used by the probation service. How is that working out, and how has NOMS sought to encourage or enable the probation service in applying this guidance?
Colin Allars
We have certainly gone to some lengths to ensure that there is awareness of maturity issues. We have explained that to our staff; we discuss it with our staff. We have set out clearly, within our commissioning framework, the sort of expectations that we have, and that draws on best practice in terms of the needs of younger offenders; so, again, we are reinforcing that. The T2A portal, which I think you are talking to, is a relatively new IT process that ensures that the information held by all the agencies working with young offenders becomes available at the point of transition into the adult system. In the past, at its worst, it could be a bundle of papers that appeared on somebody’s desk. I am deliberately characterising, but it is not particularly structured and actually quite difficult at that point to put it all together and make some sense of it, potentially with information missing. We have now put in place a clear structure and a portal that provides for that. That is now in place and it is working. I would not say it is working perfectly everywhere. We all have more work to do to make sure that the information goes in properly, but it is a system that we all work to and we have all contributed to making it work. It is absolutely the way that we ensure that that comes through. Since July this year it has become operative. That is the date I have in my mind. Since July this year, that has been in place more or less across the country. There are just a small number of sites to roll it out to.
Dr Huq
What do you make of the apparent evidence that psychosocial maturity of young adult males is slower to develop than in females? In the last session Victoria asked about that as well. Do you have a comment on that and whether, in fact, maturity is a useful concept at all in your work?
Poppy Harrison
Maturity is a useful concept, and it is something that practitioners can understand. I am looking for nods, but it is helpful. In terms of the T2A taking account of maturity guides, which were developed to be used with the adult probation assessment framework, we have done work to make sure that the principles behind that and the work that was done by the University of Birmingham have been embedded into the guidance for the new youth justice assessment framework so that you are carrying those same concepts through the assessment process. It is about being able to articulate what maturity means to courts, for example, so that they can understand how that will impact on whatever sentence is given down.
Hannah Doughty
What practitioners would look at is maturity and level of understanding. It is very much about what the young person’s understanding is of what they are doing and the consequences, or the wider issues. Young males and young females come with different issues. They are very different to work with as a practitioner; they also need different services. For young females, there are a lot of specialist services now within the National Probation Service, but also within youth offending services. There are a lot of welfare needs of young females. There is a lot of self‑harm and lots of different issues. Young males will walk around with lots of peers and probably do mature more slowly, I would say in my experience.
Victoria Prentis
You have told us that the portal is going to be the solution to transferring information, and we very much hope that that is the case. The other point that has been picked up as being a real problem for people transferring is the change in the importance of contact with their family. Can you comment on that?
Colin Allars
On the portal, it is very easy to hide behind, “We have a new portal and that solves everything.” Actually, it will be about the way people work—that is the key thing—and the portal is just a tool that they use to make sure the information gets there. The key thing is a recognition that we all need to work together. That is something that is manifestly different as a result of the way we have been working recently. I feel that we are in a much stronger place on the back of that. The transition from youth to adult raises real challenges, not just for the offender but for their families. It is a significant change in the level of support and attention, for want of a better word, that that offender will feel and receive as they move on. From a National Offender Management Service point of view, we have sought to ensure that we plan for that as well as we are able to. We have worked up a protocol with partners on what the transition for that point ought to be. Six months in advance we will sit down and work out what is going to happen and who is going to pick it up, and then review that three months before and so on. There are clear protocols there. We will seek to ensure that everybody is clear at what point they let go and at what point the next person picks up, and that the offender has been introduced to the new person who is going to be working with them for the future. There is a step change in terms of the level of interaction and so on; that is absolutely the case. It is incumbent on all of us to seek to ensure that we do what we can. The frequency of meetings with their probation officer and so on, following the transition, probably starts at a higher level and then drops off; it is not just a sudden drop-off. If they are involved in some sort of programme of work, there is continuity through that date. We are still talking to them about their employment or their housing or whatever. It is difficult; it is a challenge. A handover of any case management from one organisation to another, which is essentially what we are talking about here, is tricky. Collectively, we have tried really hard to make sure that we get that right, that the information is there and it is planned for and so on, but it is a challenge.
Poppy Harrison
You mentioned family contact. Did you mean about custody or community—
Victoria Prentis
No; I meant young offenders’ contact with their families. There is a very different attitude between under-18s and over-18s.
Poppy Harrison
Yes, absolutely.
Victoria Prentis
Is there anything we can do to ease that transition, and would that be helpful in rehabilitating them generally?
Poppy Harrison
Colin has probably covered most of that. In terms of understanding whether the Y2A portal helps to deliver that, breach was mentioned as being a significant issue for children in the last session. It is mostly anecdotal evidence, but there has been some work that has looked at the levels of breach for people who have transitioned from the youth justice system being higher than for those who have come fresh, perhaps, as adults because of the difference in the approach to youth justice and delivering those services to over-18s. The evidence from the portal will tell us whether there has been an impact on levels of breach, so we will be able to see for those who have transitioned what the breach rates are like afterwards, we hope, to see whether those improvements are seen.
Hannah Doughty
There has been development in engaging families from probation workers, because the families are a major point of contact for youth offending teams. They are fully involved in all the planning of everything that is done, because the young person is living with them. Young people will say that sometimes it is like dropping off a cliff, the transition point, because it just feels like that level of support has gone. There are a lot of transition protocols that are very good and a lot of very good transition arrangements. We have very good arrangements. I work as head of service in Liverpool and we have some very good arrangements there, but there are other areas where it is not as good. We would look at jointly managing those young people for at least six to eight months, depending on their level of need, so they would have an offender manager from probation or the CRC, as well as from the YOT, but other areas do not always have those kinds of arrangements. There are difficulties now, probably because of Transforming Rehabilitation and the difference between CRCs, because most of those youth offending team young people will go to CRCs. They will not be high risk or hit the other categories to sit with the National Probation Service. There is an issue around that, I understand, from other YOTs.
Colin Allars
On that particular point though, we have put together a protocol which will set out very clearly what the expectations are of each of the agencies. My understanding is that it is in place and working within Wales. Within England—
Victoria Prentis
This is the protocol.
Colin Allars
Yes—the protocol of how we are working together. In England, the National Probation Service—it will be my six deputy directors—are ready to sign up to that, and I think other parties are. It is at the moment with the CRCs to secure their sign-up to it as well, so that we are very clear across the whole system, so far as we are able to be within a system which is delivered by various organisations, about what the expectations are. Within that, that ought to provide the foundation to build what you have just described, because what you are describing is best practice and that is absolutely what we should be looking for.
Victoria Prentis
Are you planning on assessing this after a period of time?
Colin Allars
Yes, of course.
Victoria Prentis
We would love to know.
Chair
Do you know when that is likely to be?
Colin Allars
No. I can come back to you on that.
Chair
If you could.
Victoria Prentis
Both the portal and the protocol, and the way it is working, would be really interesting. Thank you.
Chair
That would be very helpful; thank you.
John Howell
I am interested in those over-18s who are retained by the youth offending service. Can you give an indication of the percentage of over-18s who are still being retained by them?
Hannah Doughty
I asked, within the existing board members of the Association of YOT Managers, if they could give me what their numbers were. They ranged from one area that had none that they kept—because the probation member of staff who was seconded in had those young people and they were classed as probation people—up to about 30%. Within my YOT it is about 17%, and so they varied between that period. Most will be kept because of vulnerability factors. There will be concerns about that young person—they may be looked after; they may be extremely vulnerable—going into an area where they are sitting with adults, that kind of thing. There are other issues around detention and training orders. Sometimes, if you get a two-year detention and training order—you can get those at 18—you could have young people who sit with you at 19 to 20. Again, sometimes that cannot be healthy for the youth offending service when they are sitting in a room with 12-year-olds, so there are issues around that.
John Howell
Thanks for that. I just have one further follow-up on that, and that is about the relationship between the youth offending teams and probation, which we have already touched on. What are the benefits of a close relationship between the two in handing people over?
Hannah Doughty
There are some really good relationships, depending on areas. Ours is extremely good. We have really good probation officers seconded; we have a lot of joint working with probation staff; we have joint training events. The probation people will sit on our YOT management board. There are some really good benefits about that partnership working and looking at pooling resources.
John Howell
I mean more the benefits for the individual rather than for your organisations.
Hannah Doughty
For the young people.
John Howell
Yes.
Hannah Doughty
It is because they get a more seamless service. What they will get is somebody who transitions across. Now we will try and allocate those young people who are at the point of transition to the probation staff who are sitting in the youth offending team, who will then have more experience to be able to share with them what it is going to be like when they move to probation and to make that an easier journey for them.
Andy McDonald
Do you think there is a sufficient awareness among the sentencers about neuro‑disability and brain injury and mental illness, and how are the sentencers distinguishing these various issues when they come to pass their sentences? Can you express a view about the degree of awareness of these various issues?
Poppy Harrison
I am going to declare now that I do not think I can, I am afraid.
Colin Allars
I think I will struggle as well. To the extent that it is drawn to their attention through the reports that we provide to court, certainly it is taken into account. If a pre‑sentence report sets that out or includes that sort of information, my experience is that it happens. Going wider than that, it is a question that would need to be addressed to sentencers rather than a practitioner.
Andy McDonald
Can you tell me about the proportion of cases that currently receive a pre‑sentencing report? Do you know what that might look like?
Colin Allars
I don’t, off the top of my head. Within this age group I would expect almost all of them to receive a pre‑sentence report.
Andy McDonald
All.
Colin Allars
Almost all. There is always a case where somebody will be called before the sentencer without a report, and occasionally that does happen. It is unusual in this particular age group. In my experience it is very unusual. Normally they would look for professional reports in advance.
Chair
I am sure we can probably get statistics.
Colin Allars
It is one of those things where I hesitate to say never, because it may well happen, but it would be really small in number.
Chair
If somebody could double-check, we would be grateful. I have a short point before we move on to governance issues. One of the recommendations you sometimes get is for an attendance centre order. How effective are attendance centres?
Colin Allars
I guess you need to look to me for that, probably, in the first instance. Up until a year or so ago I was responsible for them, so it is probably better for me to answer that. I think they vary. They vary very much on the basis of the officer in charge and the staff who work there. Where they are good is in the way that Professor Bottoms was talking about, in terms of providing structure, challenge, interaction and so on. In all the sorts of things that lead towards desistance, they work very well. There undoubtedly have been some where they have been less proactive in really working with the offenders who go there. We have transferred them to the CRCs as part of the transfer of that work, because it would tend to be that cohort of offenders that would be there. To the best of my knowledge, none of them has yet made major changes to what was in place, but I would be surprised over time if there were not a re-look at some of the less effective ones. They have some real potential to provide a real structure. They tend to be a Saturday morning or whatever. It is something at the weekend for people who are working during the week to go along into a structured environment, to interact with others, to learn and to be challenged, but there are quite a number that certainly are not there at the moment.
Chair
Is that the basis on which probation officers tend to recommend them, or not?
Poppy Harrison
In terms of the youth justice system, we now have the junior attendance centres that have been moved over from probation into our world. There is going to be a review of how effective they are in supporting young people, so it may be that we can provide you with some additional evidence. You have already heard that there have not been any research‑based—
Chair
Do you have a timetable for that review?
Poppy Harrison
I do not, but I will find out.
Chair
If you could, that would be very helpful.
Mr Hanson
We have kicked around a lot about the relationship between the three organisations, and I accept that there are different pressures now and different organisational structures. Would you say as a whole that the relationships, from your assessment of the three parties, are good? If there are suggestions for improvement in the relationships as they are now, what would they be for each of you?
Colin Allars
They are good; that is certainly my perception. We work very well together. We are absolutely focused on the same goals in what is right for the offender and the long‑term impact of our intervention. We have all faced the challenge of budgets being squeezed and so on and having to prioritise work. Certainly, from the probation point of view, we have faced over the last two years a major internal restructuring and reorganisation, which has been a real focus in how you continue with day‑to‑day delivery of probation work. If I look back, probably we have not invested quite as much in this area of work as maybe we might have done in more normal times. That said, we have still been at the table; we have still been working very closely together; we have certainly made some real progress on some key things. The portal is one of those; the protocol and how we work together is another one of those. Our thinking about how we might strengthen our provision—that does not necessarily mean put more in, but how we might strengthen the impact of our provision—is another part of that. We still have to have a discussion as to what that looks like, but we have made a proposition. It is quite good.
Poppy Harrison
I agree with Colin that relationships are generally good. It is probably worth emphasising the point that the local nature of the delivery of services means that we can only make quite general statements about that and there will be pockets of good and bad practice. Certainly, we introduced the transitions framework in 2012 jointly with NOMS, and the appetite from practitioners and from services was massive in terms of the interest to work together on this. We have seen some really good examples of that happening on the ground and having an impact on the experience that people have going through the system. The very nature of the fact that there is a youth justice system and an adult justice system, which is for many reasons, means that there will always be a point of transition. That always has an inherent amount of risk within it. We are all very conscious of that. It needs to be kept on the agenda; that is the key thing.
Hannah Doughty
The relationships have been good; they have developed and they have become very good. As we move on, there is a competing nature about some of the resource implications, some of the cuts that are coming through and what people can provide to each other. I hope that that does not hamper some of the relationships, because I think it could.
Mr Hanson
We have touched on the cut‑over points as being the crucial area. We have had a number of pieces of evidence, and you have touched on it yourself today, about whether or not we extend the role of the Youth Justice Board to a higher age, for example, whether we formalise this change-over that you have talked about with YOTs going in on an ad hoc basis following some people through, and whether we formalise that to a longer period. I realise these are policy issues and maybe ones you do not want to comment on now, but, in broad terms, is there value in looking at a Youth Justice Board with a wider remit to an older age, allowing YOTs to have a wider remit to an older age, or having a third body which incorporates the two but links that crossover period? Is there any value in that? We have also had evidence from the Dutch, who are now treating people up to the age of 23 as juveniles. It is just for our assessment, really. Is there value in that, or not, in your assessment now?
Hannah Doughty
There is great value in that. YOTs could quite easily work with up to 21-year-olds and hopefully reduce reoffending, as they have done in the younger ones; so I would encourage that.
Poppy Harrison
You are right in saying it is a policy question. I know that my chair and my chief executive have offered to come and give evidence on this issue if it would be helpful. We believe in a distinct youth justice system, and it goes back to what I mentioned at the beginning about the protections that are in place specifically for children and wanting to make sure that they can be used to their greatest advantage. We also think that there needs to be something distinct for young adults. The question about whether it should be the Youth Justice Board or somebody else is one that I think is for Ministers.
Mr Hanson
I suppose the question that links back to the previous session as well is: are you a mature 22-year-old or an immature 22-year-old, and are there development issues? Do they demand a youth‑based service or do they demand an adult intervention? It is whether we have a generic 22 to 23 cut-off point, with various partners working together, or whether we look at the individual but allow that flexibility for other services.
Poppy Harrison
Yes, flexibility is important.
Colin Allars
As a policy point, I should not give a view on what the right solution might be. We have tried to ensure that in the early years, post-transition, the interventions we put in place support what has been started before. As things sit at the moment, that is the key thing we need to get right so that they do not just drop off a cliff, to use Hannah’s term, but there is continuity and we are putting in place the right sort of support and interventions that support that transition. Then there is a question mark; at what point does that transition take place? I do not know what the answer to that might be.
Chair
Thank you very much. There are a number of policy issues that we want to explore, and I will put those to either the chief executives or the Minister when they come along. The final thing I was going to ask, to wrap things up, is this. Professionally you are using your judgments. Should we have a distinct strategy for young adults? If so, what are the benefits, what are the arguments for it and what would you want to see in it, in headline terms anyway?
Poppy Harrison
I think, yes, there should be a distinct strategy for young adults. In terms of what it ought to contain, the key issues that we see again and again, regardless of where it is—you have heard that there is the evidence about the science behind it—are that it has to be about the sharing of information from a broad range of sources. It has to be about a strong relationship with practitioners and having a workforce that is able and feels that it wants to work with that age group, and has the skills to do so. It is about understanding the scientific aspect of it as well and how the desistance points can be supported.
Hannah Doughty
I would say, yes. We know that the brain does not develop until later now. We have that evidence. You need to look at maturity levels; you need to look at those vulnerabilities and look at them wider. Most of these young people come from very deprived areas, with very difficult chaotic backgrounds. I also think you need to look at the multi‑agency way of working with them and the inclusion of families and those people close to them. Workers are experienced in dealing with difficult young people.
Colin Allars
There is value in recognising that this is a distinct group, which would point to the answer being yes. It needs to be evidence-based and drawing some of that out, but there is not a full suite of evidence and that is the reality of it, so we are making the best of what we have. I was struck by Professor Bottoms’s closing comments to you in terms of targeting, rather than everybody gets everything. That really struck a chord with me, because there is a risk if you go for something that just deals with this group that you imagine everybody is the same. Actually, everybody is an individual and proper targeting is really, really important. Again, I was just going to draw on the point in terms of integration. Critical to this is that all the agencies working together do so in a constructive, collaborative way but recognising that it is not just us sitting at this table who do it—it is wider society. It is local authorities; it is health; it is very much wider—it is schools and so on. You talked a bit about the early years stuff. Fitting all that together is what will make a real difference.
Chair
Thank you very much for your time and for giving evidence to us; it is very much appreciated. We have some areas to follow up. If there are any others, we will write to you. Thank you very much for your help on the inquiry. Oral evidence: Young adult offenders, HC 397 28