Hansard

I will invite my two colleagues to contribute as questions are asked because I am relatively new to the domain and Colin Maclean and Donna Bell have deep expertise in the subject area.I am glad to have the opportunity to say a little bit about the Audit Scotland report and our response to it. We welcome the report, which has been helpful to us in advising ministers on where they may take policy. I propose to say something about what we have done and what has been achieved since 2002, then describe the broad policy approach that current ministers have taken towards youth justice and conclude by addressing some of the specific issues that are raised in the report.In 2002, ministers were concerned that the agencies responsible for youth justice did not pay sufficient attention to ensuring that offending was taken seriously or dealt with promptly. Therefore, they introduced a series of standards for the response of agencies to offending behaviour. Since 2002-03, the average time from receipt of an offence-based referral to hearing decision has fallen from 95 days to 71 days. That reflects considerable improvements in the time taken by police and reporters and some improvements by social work.Ministers also shared Audit Scotland's concerns about the lack of timely local and national information published by the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration and provided to local agencies. Following a lot of work by officials and SCRA staff, the SCRA now provides regular, valuable and trusted reports that allow national monitoring and accountability and that support local improvement.As members will be aware, ministers established a fast-track hearings pilot in 2003 to test whether more timely responses to offending would reduce reoffending. It is interesting that performance in the fast-track pilot areas showed a reduction in offending levels, but the comparator areas achieved an even greater reduction in offending. The lesson from that appeared to be that we need to focus as much on matching action to need as on timeliness, so the fast-track approach was not rolled out.In the past four years, ministers have invested more than £20 million of capital support in developing the secure estate. We can now say that Scotland has world-class secure facilities for the small number of young people who need to be detained for their safety and that of others. The challenge is to make the most effective use of those facilities by ensuring that high-quality support is provided while young people are in secure accommodation and after they leave it.Following the 2003 election, ministers introduced a series of measures to combat antisocial behaviour, including new interventions that were designed to tackle persistent offending and antisocial behaviour by young people who are under 16, such as antisocial behaviour orders and movement restriction orders. Agencies have made sparing use of those provisions and have in most cases preferred to focus effort and resources on intensive interventions to address young people's behaviour.Ministers wished to reduce the impact on communities of persistent offending and therefore set a single target for youth justice—a reduction in persistent youth offending. As the report demonstrates, that target was not met, as the number of persistent young offenders increased from 1,201 in 2003-04 to 1,429 in 2006-07, an increase of 19 per cent. However, the total number of children who were referred for offending during the period was almost unchanged—it rose from 16,470 in 2003-04 to 17,624 in 2005-06, but then dropped back in 2006-07 to 16,490, which was nearly the 2003-04 level. The early indications are that further reductions have occurred in 2007-08—unfortunately, we do not yet have the figures for that year, but they will be out relatively soon. By contrast, over the same period, care and protection referrals rose by 44 per cent. At a time when concerns about children were significantly enhanced and youth justice was politically high profile, we might have expected a significant increase in offence referrals. It is too early to say whether the reductions will be sustained or to offer a conclusive view on what has caused the reduction, but the early signs are encouraging.One of the first decisions that the new ministers made in the summer was to ask officials to review youth justice policy. The review is almost complete and ministers will soon consider the advice. However, ministers have already made several decisions and statements that indicate the direction of travel that they intend to take. First, ministers will no longer use the persistent young offender target; instead, they have asked us to develop a range of indicators to test whether policies on reducing offending behaviour are working. Research from several sources indicates that early involvement of children and young people in the justice system is likely to accelerate their progress into the adult justice system, and that tackling behaviour effectively without labelling it as offending is more likely to prevent future offending. Ministers support that view, which sits comfortably with their broad approach to early intervention.Ministers are determined to ensure that all young people have more choices and chances, with positive opportunities for all; that the risks to young people and the risks that are posed by young people are identified and tackled as swiftly as possible; and that effective action is taken when risks turn into reality. Ministers are also determined to use the getting it right for every child approach to address all risks that affect children and young people, which involves early identification, assessment of risks, planning to address those risks and effective and co-ordinated action by agencies. Ministers have indicated that they believe that antisocial behaviour measures such as antisocial behaviour orders and movement restriction orders should be used only in conjunction with intensive interventions to tackle the offending behaviour.The new strategy on youth justice will be implemented in the context of the concordat that was agreed last week with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. That has significant implications. Local government will be involved in agreeing the policy and will therefore be committed to its delivery. Local government will make local decisions about how best to deploy the resources to ensure delivery of the policy. Central Government will focus its efforts on working with partners to identify, influence and spread best practice and on evaluating outcomes, rather than micromanaging service delivery. Both central and local government will be committed to strong and effective local performance management, and we will work with local government and other partners such as the police and children's reporters to ensure that a strong performance management culture pervades work on youth justice. I am conscious that time is pressing on, but I would like to touch briefly on some of the specific points that Audit Scotland raises in its report. We all agree that there is much in the report that we can be positive about. National standards are in place and they provide a focus for improved interagency working. There are significant improvements in the timeliness of police reporting and children's reporters' decision making. More services are in place for young people who offend, and 500 additional children's services social workers have been recruited. Underpinning all of that, the report highlights the increase in resources invested in the area. Progress on performance reporting has been more mixed. There have been significant improvements in the provision and use of performance data over the years, but we acknowledge that that is an area where more needs to be done—COSLA and ministers recognised that at a general level in last week's concordat, as did Lorne Crerar in his recent report on scrutiny. It is part of our job to work closely with police reporters and local authorities, as well as with voluntary sector partners, to develop more robust performance management systems to secure the delivery of youth justice policies. It is clear that antisocial behaviour orders took time to bed in. New ministers have given a clear steer that they expect antisocial behaviour orders and other antisocial behaviour tools to be used only when appropriate. The number of referrals to children's hearings has increased substantially. As I said, most of that increase is related to care and welfare concerns. We are doing important work with agencies to ensure that cases are referred to the reporter only when compulsion is required, and we have seen some early reductions in the total number of referrals.On variations in police referral practice, we recognise the right of local agencies to develop approaches to suit local needs, but we have been working with police nationally and locally to identify and discuss variations in practice with a view to identifying and spreading best practice nationally. Through the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, the police are committed to addressing that. Concerns have been expressed about the time taken to complete social work reports. It is clearly important that assessments are done quickly, to enable decisions to be made and action to be taken, but not at the expense of the quality of decision making. The fast-track pilot showed us that speed is not sufficient. As has been noted, we will work with local government to develop a performance management and reporting system that leads to the most effective action being taken.The report also raises concerns about the level of persistent offending. The specific persistent youth offender target was susceptible to changes in the policies and practices of agencies. We will work with agencies to identify measures that help them to performance manage their own systems and provide indicators that provide good information about changes in young people's behaviour rather than just indicating changes in the practice of adults and agencies. As part of the new relationship with local government, the promotion of best practice will be key to what we do. Our role will increasingly be to focus on that area, helping agencies and others to identify and spread best practice through developing and implementing agreed national policy.The new Administration has reviewed the issues surrounding reducing youth crime and indicated a strong preference for preventive, diversionary action, early intervention and positive support work across agencies. Ministers are currently considering options surrounding a revised youth justice strategy that sets out their vision and supporting actions for preventing and managing offending behaviour by children and young people. In that work, they have taken full account of the recommendations in the Audit Scotland report and will ensure that action is taken to address the shortcomings and issues it identifies. We expect to be able to provide more information on all this early next year, but please be assured that the new Administration is committed to addressing youth crime and antisocial behaviour and to working in partnership with local agencies to deliver for children and communities.