Oral evidence: The treatment of young adults in the criminal justice system, HC 397Tuesday 26 April 2016

Oral evidence, 26 April 2016.

Witnesses

Angela Cossins, Deputy Director, National Probation Service, Max Rutherford, Criminal Justice Programme Manager, Transition to Adulthood Alliance, Barrow Cadbury Trust, and Huw Williams, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology and Co-Director of the Centre for Clinical Neuropsychology Research, Exeter University, gave evidence.

Chair

Welcome. Thank you all very much for coming to give evidence to us today. We have met some of you before, under different circumstances. Thank you for coming back. Could you briefly introduce yourselves? We will then move on immediately to questions.

Max Rutherford

Good morning. I am Max Rutherford from the Barrow Cadbury Trust. As part of that role, I lead the work of the T2A Alliance.

Angela Cossins

I am Angela Cossins. I am the deputy director for the NPS in the south-west and south-central division.

Professor Williams

I am Professor Huw Williams from Exeter University. I am a professor of neuropsychology. I also represent the British Psychological Society.

Chair

Thank you very much. We have a sense that there seems to be some pushback from the Ministry and others on the idea that there must be a distinct strategy and distinct governance structures for young adults. Sometimes it is not practical, and sometimes it is an issue of cost; you cannot ignore cost, at the end of the day. There is something in that, isn’t there? How do you recognise the practical realities, given that you are dealing with quite a small cohort of people, but quite difficult ones? How do you make this realisable?

Max Rutherford

As you will be aware, T2A’s position is that there should be a distinct approach for all young adults aged 18 to 25 in the criminal justice system. That is based on a number of fields of evidence that we have collated over the last 10 years, since we started the programme. Yesterday I was with a team of people looking at developing a young adult court programme. A borough police commander, who is leading that approach for us on the site, put it really well. He said that, for him, the reason why 18 to 25-year-olds should be a distinct group and have a special effort of resources and capacity was that, if we get it wrong with that age group, there is at least a decade-long consequence, socially and financially. This is the group at the peak age of offending but also the age group most likely permanently to desist from crime, if we get it right. At a time when resources are scarce, to quote the Kenneth Younger committee of 1974, this is the group worth focusing them on.

Chair

What is the NPS approach to this?

Angela Cossins

We have responsibilities for all 18 to 25-year-old offenders the NPS supervises in a community setting or on licence. We also have responsibilities through our work as statutory partners of the youth offending teams. The point has been well made that we need to get it right with this group. We take that responsibility very seriously. We have a very clear approach to what is now a consistent deployment of staff and way of working that we have in youth offending teams. One of the real benefits of being a national service is that we have been able to ensure that all 156 YOTs now have a common framework for working with the NPS. It is not just from 18 to 25 onwards—our responsibilities start earlier; but I certainly agree that we need to be mindful of the research and evidence on how best to work with that particular group of offenders and young people in the system. We are doing that and will continue to do so.

Professor Williams

I agree with that. Over the last few years there has been an improvement in the youth justice system around reducing the chances of young people coming into custody. As you know, those who end up in custody tend to have much more in the way of problems—brain injury, psychiatric disturbance, suicidality and so on. With a more nuanced approach to those younger people, you probably get much better outcomes. With 18 to 20-year-olds and 20 to 24-year-olds, you are looking at a life stage and a life point where you need to take account of specific types of issues. You can then train up a workforce to be able to address those more effectively. In earlier evidence, you heard that there is a need to bring about change. The thing that seemed to be missing from the equation was someone who could enable a person in the custodial environment to engage in their rehabilitation. In the 18-to-24 age group, there is the risk that people will drift into peer group pressures, rather than being able to engage with the process of change, especially when there are neuromaturational deficits.

Chair

Professor Williams, do you have any sense of where that person might sensibly sit within the system? You talked about a person who has ownership and so on.

Professor Williams

We have carried out an evaluation of putting in link workers to enable identification of brain injury in prisons. It is possible to put link workers into these environments to enable vulnerabilities to be picked up. You heard earlier about autism and having more autism-aware environments. The same needs to be done around ADHD, brain injury and so on, because they are quite major conditions within these environments. If you address those issues, you are likely to reduce the number of infractions in custody and to improve resettlement. I am not sure whether it should be someone who is already a prison officer and then gets a changed role, or whether it should be through co-commissioning with the NHS, where you get more hybrid workers, but there is certainly a role for somebody who could enable the identification of vulnerabilities that are criminogenic but also have an effect on the wellbeing of a person all the time.

Chair

Do any of you get a sense that the structure of the NHS lends itself well to this sort of co-commissioning, or is it too monolithic, frankly, to get into that sort of multi-agency working?

Max Rutherford

We have seen some really good examples of partnership working between the NHS and criminal justice agencies. One of our T2A pathway projects in Rotherham is a model of co-commissioning between the Rotherham and Doncaster mental health service and the police, to deal with, among other things, autism and brain injury among young adult offenders. One thing linked to that point is that we feel that practice and practitioners are leaving policy makers behind on this agenda. Practitioners have really taken to this evidence base, which they recognise in their work. They have defined young adults in criminal justice as 18 to 25-year-olds, based on the evidence from neuroscience and so on. Very pleasingly, we have seen police and crime commissioners leading on this. In community rehabilitation companies and the National Probation Service, there is work on maturity. What we are not seeing is any co-ordinated strategy from the centre to recognise that it is worth having a distinct approach to the group that makes the biggest demand on its services. That is disappointing. It is also perhaps somewhat unwise not to think about the group that offends the most but has the most potential to stop offending.

Professor Williams

There are NICE guidelines being developed at the moment around mental health and neurodisability for assessment, screening and potential interventions for people in prison, which may be helpful in joining up the systems more effectively.

Victoria Prentis

Professor Williams, can you tell us about the practicalities of your recommendations for universal screening? How could it work?

Professor Williams

My recommendation for screening is much more about being able to create a system where you can identify people who probably need screening.

Victoria Prentis

So you ask some questions.

Professor Williams

Yes, questions.

Victoria Prentis

When they come into prison?

Professor Williams

You can certainly ask questions as they come into prison. In the youth estate, this is already happening. We now have the comprehensive health assessment tool. There are questions around mental health and neurodisability, so you will pick up autism issues, brain injury issues or ADHD issues. That is now undertaken informally in some YOIs for 18 to 21-year-olds.

Victoria Prentis

Do they ask about bereavement in those assessments?

Professor Williams

There are questions about adversity and about grief and trauma. Around trauma, there is an opportunity to identify some issues. You are absolutely right. The lives of these people are full of adversity and losses. Those issues leave people bereft of contact and love, in many ways.

Victoria Prentis

How widely are these tools used?

Professor Williams

Across the youth estate at the moment—

Victoria Prentis

We have just heard that there is not really a youth estate.

Professor Williams

The youth estate is shrinking fast. That is a good thing, in many ways. It is now important to move from informal use of assessment tools like the comprehensive health assessment tool in the young adult domain to utilising, perhaps, a shortened version of that as a screening tool. We should also utilise the data that already exist. Another big issue in this area is that there is a lot of information on systems such as OASys that could be extracted and used, but there are often problems in sharing information between health care, the forensic or criminal side and the rehabilitation side. It is important to try to come up with ways of doing that. That is why people who help to co-ordinate care have an incredibly important role. You will then have somebody who can bridge those gaps.

Chair

I understand that.

Mr Hanson

Mr Rutherford, in your evidence, you mention “overarching principles” that you think should back distinct and deliberate approaches to the sentencing of young adults. Could you give some indication to the Committee of what you think those should be, so that we can discuss them?

Max Rutherford

In the sentencing process?

Mr Hanson

Yes.

Max Rutherford

One area that we are developing at the moment is the idea of having distinct courts for young adults, and it would be in those settings that we saw those principles realised. One of them would be about fulfilling the idea of procedural fairness. I know that you have heard evidence from the Centre for Justice Innovation on this. It would be a setting where young adults had the process explained to them in more detail; where their maturity was taken into account more routinely—ideally, in every case—where the community rehabilitation company and the National Probation Service were available to offer the court real alternatives to custody on the day, and which could start shortly after the sentence was given; and where, ideally, the family were involved, in the same way as they might be in the youth setting. Perhaps uniquely, young adults are often the child in a family context, where they have a family, but also a parent. We feel that it is vitally important that family in a wider sense are involved in that process. The sentence itself should be tailored to meet the specific needs of this age group. Within the existing legislative framework, there are many improvements that could be made to the way young adults are sentenced, but with some legislative change, you could go much further.

Mr Hanson

You said that you want to retain detention in young offender institution sentences, but to extend them up to the age of 25. What difference would that make?

Max Rutherford

That would be specifically where custody was being considered and used. Now DYOI as a sentence is restricted to 18 to 20-year-olds, so notionally, at least, they are held in distinct regimes in custody. We would like to see that extended to the age of 25 and for young adults in that age group to be held in distinct institutions.

Mr Hanson

What is your assessment of the cost implications of the total changes that you have proposed? Is there an additional cost, or do you expect it to be offset by reduced reoffending in the longer term?

Max Rutherford

There would certainly be a longer-term gain. In the short term, as Michael Spurr and the Minister identified earlier, there is capacity in the young adult estate. We would see the first step as being to fill those places by bringing in older young adults. That would utilise existing staff expertise in those establishments much more effectively than just bringing in older adults up to any age. We also think that there is potential further to drive down the overall number of young adults in custody, thereby freeing up additional capacity for the older young adult age group.

Mr Hanson

What is your assessment of the cost implications of the overarching principles that you mentioned earlier—family involvement, extra explanation to young people and a range of other changes in practice? Can we get some ballpark figures?

Max Rutherford

We think that there would be no cost to doing that. The current young adult court pilots we are looking to set up have no funding from Barrow Cadbury Trust or others. It is about reorganising capacity that already exists. We are looking to utilise expertise among youth sentencers. There is a huge amount of capacity among youth magistrates at the moment. They have come to us to say, “We want to continue to be youth specialists, but in a good way we don’t have enough work to do, because there aren’t so many under-18s coming into our courts.” In the first instance, we would like youth bench chairs to sit as part of three in the adult courts, alongside two adult magistrates. Those courts would be run in a way that is more comparable to a youth setting, at nil cost. It is about listings. Young adult cases could be heard on one given day a week, rather than spread across a week along with older adult cases. Rather than having to turn up ad hoc when a young adult is in court, to provide a special intervention, the CRC and the NPS would know that they needed to be present one day a week to make their offer. It would be a better, more effective use of resources if, for example, National Probation Service staff were doing maturity assessments on a particular day, knowing that all the cases would involve young adults.

Angela Cossins

I want to clarify one thing. Consideration of maturity is a requirement of all reports on young people, in all court settings. While not a distinct, bespoke assessment tool, that consideration of maturity is absolutely part of practice. It would not be a matter of saying, “We are doing the maturity assessment court today.” We would expect all our practitioners to be able to do that in all settings. In terms of the availability of staff to ensure that the right sentencing options are provided to the court, we would want to ensure that that was happening wherever young people were being sentenced. Clearly, we will look with interest at the pilots. They have been done on a voluntary basis in areas where people have said, “Yes, we’d like to try that out.”

Alex Chalk

Mr Rutherford, I would like to ask a few more questions in respect of those Mr Hanson asked, on having special custodial settings up to the age of 25. There is anecdotal evidence, and maybe even scientific evidence, to suggest that that is a very difficult cohort in custody and that you need some older prisoners—people of 29 or 30 or into their 30s—to dial down the tempo of a prison, to calm it down. What evidence do you have to suggest that having a prison for people from 18 up to 25 would be better for them overall? Some might say that it would make matters worse. You would be putting all the most difficult prisoners in one place, with no adult role models. Is that not just going to make matters worse?

Max Rutherford

We are basing our position on the wider evidence base that this age group is distinct and, therefore, should have a distinct approach at every stage of the system. Where we have seen evidence anecdotally about mixing, we have seen positives and negatives presented, but it is always anecdotal. We have seen some evidence that there is a more calming influence, although we are slightly concerned about why it is calming. Why are older, perhaps more experienced, prisoners having that calming influence? It is not always quite so straightforward. We have also seen evidence from Portland YOI, for example, which was traditionally a young adult prison. When mixing took place there, the governor said, “We never had a drug problem until older adults came in. Now it is rife.” There is contradictory anecdotal evidence. We feel that this needs to be subject to rigorous evidence. I really welcome the comment from Ms Prentis about evidence, because we have not seen that from Government. There has been a process of policy erosion around young adults.

Alex Chalk

I agree with that, but isn’t it also incumbent on you to base things on evidence? You have made a clear suggestion that that is what should happen, but on your own admission, it is on the basis of supposition and anecdote, isn’t it? Where is the hard evidence to suggest that we should spend a fortune—because it would cost a lot to reconfigure our prisons—to do this? You cannot do it on the basis of anecdote and supposition, can you?

Max Rutherford

It would cost very little to reorganise the YOI estate, as it exists, to accommodate 18 to 25-year-olds. In the first instance, you could do it without new legislation. You could have some on the DYOI sentence and older young adults not on the DYOI, but all housed together. Cost issues would be minimal, and of course you would already have expert staff in those establishments. We base the proposition on the wider evidence base that this is a distinct group. What we would like to see is some research from Government to say, “This is a model that we are going to test rigorously before we do anything like getting rid of the DYOI altogether,” which was the 2013 proposal. We think that there is much more risk in getting rid of that sentence altogether without doing some quality research first.

Alex Chalk

To be clear, there is no evidence that you can put before the Committee to suggest that having that cohort together would lead to better outcomes for those prisoners.

Max Rutherford

Some young adult prisons in this country have been configured on 18 to 25. Swinfen Hall is one. It is a very good prison, in terms of its track record, with good inspection reports. The governor, Teresa Clarke, is very strong. She is the national lead for care leavers, with a very concerted effort to focus on that age group. There have been other variations on the theme of young adult prisons, like HMP Isis, which goes up to 30, and Brinsford, which was for 18 to 20 and is now a mixed establishment. There have been different methodologies. Where it has been 18 to 25, the outcomes have generally been good. Where it has been done in that way internationally—I have not really talked about the international evidence, but it is much more substantial than what we have in England and Wales—the evidence is again very good. Last year I was in Neustrelitz prison in Germany; the results they were able to get by targeting that age group were very impressive. It was focused very much on employment and training and they had a very interesting mix of offence categories. Earlier, we heard from Michael Spurr about the problems of mixing offence categories. In Germany, they did not take that view; they decided that it was very much an age profile that they wanted to reach. There was a whole range of different young people and experiences among them.

Chair

I know that you have some evidence on that, but I do not know whether or not you have shared it with the Committee yet. If you are able to send anything over, it will be very helpful.

Max Rutherford

Sure.

Chair

We are time limited, but we are very interested in that work. Ms Prentis, do you want to follow up on that, before I bring in Mr Hanson?

Victoria Prentis

There was a question for the first panel on why the NOMS maturity assessment report has been delayed until the autumn. Ms Cossins, it struck me that you might know—don’t worry if you don’t.

Angela Cossins

I am not clear about what is being referred to, but I was sitting in and listening. I will check back and get a note to you.

Chair

That will be very helpful.

Mr Hanson

We are quite considered, in terms of looking at what works to prevent reoffending. Some of the evidence that we have had relates to American systems, where there are programmes in place to enable young adults who are accused of less serious offences to have no prosecution, if they comply with particular court directions. We have been very interested in looking at how judges have taken ownership of that. From the point of view of probation services and of the voluntary sector, in particular, is there any merit in exploring further that approach to non-judicial prosecutions and diversion tactics?

Max Rutherford

In England and Wales there are already a number of very good schemes of that kind. Most of them tend to be run through integrated offender management schemes with the police. Indeed, there are a number of summary justice measures, led by police and crime commissioners, focused specifically on the young adult age group. That has a direct knock-on effect in reducing demand in courts and, subsequently, in community sentences. There is much more potential to do that, and if it were part of a central strategy around this age group, it would give a much clearer mandate to local areas that it was the right thing to do, rather than just something that happens—as it does at the moment—in areas that are enthusiastic about it.

Mr Hanson

Do you have any evidence that gives an indication of the reoffending rates following movement through that type of scheme?

Max Rutherford

At the moment, we have six projects across England that are subject to an outcomes evaluation. We are hoping to have the first wave of reconviction data later this year, subject to the data lab in the Ministry of Justice being able to provide it. Some of the other initiatives that I have mentioned—for example, with police and crime commissioners—are linked up to IDIOM, which is the national police live offending tracking data system. They have been able to report measurable, substantive reductions in reconviction rates. I can send a note updating you on where those schemes are, so that you can contact them for that information.

Angela Cossins

Often—erroneously, some would say—those are described as restorative justice approaches, although not restorative justice with a capital R and a capital J. It has been very much part of the practice of probation over many years to work with the police on IOM schemes, as part of an IOM approach. There has been quite a lot of evidence—with a small e—that these approaches are well worth exploring. From an integrated offender management point of view, we are very much engaged at local level with schemes that are working through some of those processes.

Max Rutherford

One of the real advantages of those sorts of schemes is that it is not about letting young adults off; it is actually about a much more immediate consequence to the offending. In instances of out-of-court summary disposals, there is a much shorter time delay between offence and intervention. Young adults, who sometimes have issues with forward planning or impulsivity, can see much more directly the consequence of their offending than if they had to wait six months for a trial.

Professor Williams

I am thinking about examples internationally. In New Zealand, Judge Becroft brought about an overhaul of the criminal justice system around young adults. I am not sure whether they have data yet, but I can be in touch to find out. They have taken account of maturity and neurodisability and looked both at sentencing policy and how that influences how long a young adult is in prison, and at what kind of community support is needed and how sensitive to various cultural factors it would need to be. There may not yet be a lot of data around the influences of interventions for the groups I am particularly interested in—groups of significant interest to you, I imagine—as it is relatively early days. However, the level of reoffending and risk of suicidality and self-harm is so significant where there is neurodisability and adversity that it is very likely that interventions to try to address those issues will lead to reductions in reoffending in the long term.

Victoria Prentis

Is the research on maturation and criminal behaviour applicable only to young men, as was suggested earlier?

Professor Williams

No. The research is across gender. There is a lack of research in general around girls and women who offend, for reasons I am sure you are aware of, but there are particular issues. There is some very interesting work coming out of America around early sexual abuse, traumatic brain injury and so on in both genders, especially in young women. There is a host of factors. You are right to be thinking about the adversity issues. I was pleased to hear earlier that there is a move towards understanding trauma in the lives of young women who offend. That needs to be transferred over to young men as well.

Victoria Prentis

Would you agree?

Max Rutherford

Yes. Earlier I sent the Committee a report we have recently published on the management of young adult women in prison, where there is no distinct approach at all, even notionally, at 18-plus. We found a number of differences between young adult men and young adult women, in terms of their life experiences. One is that young women are quite likely to be mothers themselves. The impact on the children is much greater, because in nine out of 10 cases when a young mother goes to prison the child goes into care, compared with one in 10 cases when a young man goes to prison. The other issue is trauma. Although many women in prison will experience trauma, particularly domestic violence, because young women are much younger in age, they are much more likely to have experienced it very recently, so that traumatic experience is very raw. That has a direct impact in custody.

Professor Williams

There is an additional point. You hear mention of how the brain matures at various points and of the incredibly important early years—the first three years. There is a very good review just out on the effect of trauma across childhood and adolescence and the differential effects on brain development, depending on the level of trauma that young women and young men have experienced. It goes on throughout the teenage years as well, because you get heightened levels of fight or flight and, therefore, increased chances of risk-taking behaviour. Earlier, the phrase “being spontaneous” was used. That is because you are a risk taker, and are impulsive, to get out of danger. One factor in drug misuse issues is self-medicating. We find that neurodisability, for example, is associated with greater degrees of drug taking, which is largely about self-medicating.

Chair

I understand that. We have talked a lot about what we did by way of disposals beforehand. In terms of the Government’s prison reform agenda, for example, are there things that you think should be incorporated? There is the distinctiveness of the estate. We are, hopefully, trying to make sure that women do not go into custody unless it is absolutely unavoidable, for all the reasons we have talked about. Are there more things that should be taken on board?

Professor Williams

Yes. It is absolutely vital. Lord Harris’s review proposed having somebody in a role to co-ordinate care, and thinking about co-commissioning with the NHS and ensuring that there are better ways in which we can intervene. We should utilise the interventions and treatments that have been developed in general healthcare systems around managing mental health issues, brain injury issues and all the rest of it. Linking that to the care of young adult offenders is vital. It is incredibly important not just to provide that care within prison environments but to think about the resettlement process. Half of young adults who offend are likely to be back in prison within a year and 75% are back within two to three years, so it is incredibly important to ensure that there is continuity of care and that there are proper links in communities. With the new CRCs now in place, it is important that they take on board how to address vulnerabilities and that they are appropriately resourced to take on these young people, so that they can both influence the right packages of care, which are determined at the point of sentencing, and ensure that they are followed through and nothing is lost in the system. Quite often an individual somehow ends up in a system where they do not really know what is going on, because of the various issues in their lives, and nobody seems to co-ordinate their care effectively.

Max Rutherford

We welcome the notion that prison governors might have more autonomy. I do not think that would include being able to define the age range that they would have or, indeed, the numbers being sent to the prison. Those are two problems with autonomy. We would be interested to see a pilot prison for young adults as part of that process. I want to pick up on a comment that was made earlier about safer custody suites and Lord Harris’s review, because that is really important for the new prison reform programme. We feel strongly that containing young adults in their cell for 23 hours a day, albeit perhaps in cells where there are fewer ligature points from which to hang themselves, is not going to keep—

Chair

It is tinkering around the edges a bit, isn’t it?

Max Rutherford

It is not going to keep staff safe and it is certainly not going to achieve positive outcomes post-release. We think that is really the place to start, rather than thinking of ways in which governors might have more autonomy over health commissioning, vital as that is.

Chair

What about the bit that may not be custody but where we are trying to look at alternative disposals? I am thinking of the sharing of data between the various agencies—all the things that might prevent us getting there in the first place. What is your sense of how adequate that is, or is not, between, for example, NPS and the CRCs, which we have not talked about very much with you?

Angela Cossins

We know that sharing data is critical. I am confident that we have the right processes in place to ensure that the agencies that are involved with a young person are able to share data. When we have had individual cases where that has not happened sufficiently—clearly, there have been some—or when we identify that there is a glitch in the system that we are operating, we are very quick to want to address that and to ensure that we improve the information sharing. At the heart of how we understand working with this younger age group, in particular, is collaboration between the various agencies, which are all important and really need to have a shared understanding of the young person, from the various perspectives from which they come to that work.

Chair

Do you see particular barriers that make it harder for NPS to achieve that? Are there things that people would like Government to do differently around that?

Max Rutherford

We have seen some really excellent examples of data sharing and information sharing at a local level, particularly where there is enthusiasm for working with this age group. It has been really impressive to see. As I mentioned earlier, what is holding some of that back is the sense that there is not a leadership role—a central strategy driving this agenda forward. This is anecdotal, but when I do the rounds of meetings, I find that this inquiry is seen as playing that leadership role, to some extent. It has given impetus at local level to taking some of this work forward. Beyond this inquiry, people really want to see a response from the Government to show that they are taking this agenda seriously and that they are going to redefine young adults as those aged 18 to 25, because that is what practice is doing already.

Chair

How fundamental would you say it is, essentially, that we take away that the definitions are wrong at the moment?

Professor Williams

In terms of age?

Chair

Yes.

Professor Williams

Yes, at the moment they are wrong—just having the chronological age of 18 and 18-to-21. We need to think about the maturity issue and the factors that influence maturity, and how that influences the person’s ability to change their behaviour. What has been missing, seemingly, in the process is the word “rehabilitation”. As Lord Harris indicated, we need a stronger sense of philosophy around what it actually means to enable people to change behaviour. To enable people to change behaviour, you need to understand what factors limit their ability to do that—impulsivity, memory problems, drug factors and so on. The Committee’s review is a very helpful exercise, which is, as Max suggested, providing leadership. It is important to have a strategy around managing the integration of agencies and better interdisciplinary working for this very vulnerable population.

Angela Cossins

From an operational and an operational leadership point of view, the two key pieces of work that we have achieved in the last 12 months, since becoming the NPS, set a framework for demonstrating interagency work. The first is the protocol Mr Allars spoke to you about when he gave evidence a few months ago, which is published and is now operating. There is a very clear expectation on all those involved in transitioning an individual young person from a youth offending team to the adult world, be it to the CRC or to the NPS, and a much more structured focus. That gives absolute clarity and, I hope, the message that we see this as an important area of work. We have put energy into that. The second one is the partnership framework that we have agreed with the Youth Justice Board, which clarifies the role of the probation service in youth offending teams. I am aware that it is early days. Having inherited 35 very different ways of operating and having taken on the role of looking at our work with young people, on behalf of Mr Allars and the NPS, I see the priority as making sure that we have a steady state and the right building blocks and foundations to work consistently with the people we have statutory responsibility for. Both documents went live only in the last few months, one of them very recently. We now have a consistent framework for resourcing YOTs and that provides us with the operational leadership building block to be able to take that work forward.

Marie Rimmer

Ms Cossins, you talk about consistent staffing levels for YOTs. Have there not been significant cuts in funding for YOTs at local level? What impact has that had on multi-agency work and the outcomes for young people?

Angela Cossins

We inherited 35 very different ways of resourcing. Some former trusts did not deploy any probation staff to YOTs, while some deployed large numbers. In terms of cash contribution, some were giving absolutely nothing and some were giving quite significant sums of money, and those large sums of money were used in very different ways. We inherited a very mixed picture. Our objective was—

Marie Rimmer

Was that the funding from probation?

Angela Cossins

That was the funding from the probation trusts, as formerly holding the statutory responsibility.

Marie Rimmer

What about the funding from local government to YOTs—to the actual YOT teams?

Angela Cossins

NPS does not have responsibility for that area.

Marie Rimmer

No, but have you seen any impacts on the multi-agency work? Is less coming forward from local government level—from local communities?

Angela Cossins

I have not seen anything on the impact of that that I can contribute to the Committee.

Marie Rimmer

I understand that.

Chair

That is fair enough. It has been an extremely helpful session. Is there any bit of the Harris report that any of you would not implement?

Max Rutherford

There are some areas of the Harris report particular to coroner work, which is outside our area of expertise. I cannot really comment on that.

Chair

You would not comment on that.

Max Rutherford

We welcomed the Harris report and we will work closely with it. The principle of enshrining the concept of maturity in a statutory framework in legislation is absolutely right. The recognition that all young adults in custody are vulnerable, by the very nature of their age, is essential, as is the definition of young adults as 18 to 25. Those are our three key areas of alignment. We think that CARO is a very interesting idea and a model worth exploring, rather than rejecting outright, but there are perhaps other ways that the estate could be configured whereby the staff within it can support young adults.

Chair

Professor Williams, do you have anything to add?

Professor Williams

Yes. I would add something about trying to identify some of the vulnerabilities that underpin the problems that these young people have. For example, we show that suicidality and self-harm are often associated with traumatic brain injury, as I have mentioned. It is about identifying the vulnerabilities that lead to young people having extreme personal forms of distress. You have heard about the structures in prison; at the moment, in some places, they still leave people isolated and despairing. If not a CARO-type worker, there needs to be somebody empowered to connect with and relate to young adults, to enable them to identify goals in their lives that would give them more meaning than ending up back in the criminal justice system in future. When you hear about governors who take more local leadership of these issues, that is a wonderful idea. They may be able to empower their workforce to identify those key areas, to give people goals and the skills to achieve those goals, so that they can be resettled out of those environments into more productive lives.

Chair

Autonomy can be good in this context, but there is still a statutory framework issue that we are interested in. Thank you very much for your time and your evidence, which you gave in a very concise and clear way. We got through a lot of very big issues. My colleagues and I are very grateful to you. Oral evidence: The treatment of young adults in the criminal justice system, HC 397 6