Prevent Offending by Children and Young People

This has been one of the Partnership’s core strategic priorities for many years and remains so today. Well-developed links with the Rochdale Borough Children’s Trust have enabled a number of collaborative projects to be developed and implemented over recent years, with the aims of improving the life chances of young people and providing them with the activities, support and guidance that will divert them from involvement in crime and anti-social behaviour.

The Children’s Plan, published in December 2007 by the Department for Children Schools and Families, contains a number of proposed measures designed to keep young people on the road to success in their lives. It acknowledges that “the majority of young people do not offend but we need to reduce the harm caused by youth crime both to the victims of it and to the young offenders themselves”.

Our priorities for 2008-2011

• Dealing with emerging trends in crime committed by young people, particularly involving the use of weapons.
• Reducing the risk of re-offending by persistent young offenders by adopting the Youth Justice Board’s ‘scaled approach’, to target resources at those young people most at risk of offending.
• Providing Targeted Youth Support to help identify at an early stage young people at risk and work to improve opportunities and outcomes for them.
• Introducing a Boroughwide Prevention Strategy, to develop and maintain progress in reducing the number of first time entrants to the criminal justice system.
• Working with colleagues across other Partnerships to support schemes to promote positive images of young people and to encourage greater understanding and cohesion between generations and backgrounds.
• Taking timely and appropriate enforcement action to ensure that problem behaviour is dealt with at an early stage to prevent escalation.

Our targets

• Reducing the rate of proven re-offending by young people (NI 19).
• Reducing the number of young people who are first time entrants to the Youth Justice System (NI 111).
• Reducing the percentage of 16-18 year olds not in education, employment or training (NI 117).
• Increasing numbers of young people participating in positive activities (NI 110).
• Ensuring that numbers of custodial sentences are proportionate to the overall number of young people’s convictions (NI 43).
• Maintaining proportionate representation within the Criminal Justice System of people from BME groups (NI 44).