Greater Manchester intensive community scheme for offending youths is praised for ‘success’

By Dean Wilkins

A Greater Manchester community scheme, which aims to reduce the number of 18 to 24 year olds who end up in prison has been praised.

The scheme’s programmes, which cost around £5,000 per year compared with about £50,000 for a prison place for a young offender, are tailored for each offender, with intensive supervision, 30 hours per week of activity, unpaid work and a curfew - with swift sanctions for non-compliance.

By the end of last March, 539 of the 1,851 sentenced to the scheme had successfully completed it, with 672 still serving their orders.

Lord Adobawale has tabled an amendment to the Government's Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, calling for it to be rolled out to other areas in the country. A recent report for the scheme said it had achieved ‘very good compliance rates and early indications are that it is successful in reducing reoffending rates’.

Lord Ramsbotham, the former chief inspector of prisons, has also tabled an amendment, calling for youth referral orders, which can help reduce reoffending, to be made available to young people aged 18-20.

It comes after Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, warned last year that young men in prison were "sleeping through their sentences".

Young offenders aged 18-25 make up a 10th of the population, but a third of those are sent to prison each year.

Juliet Lyon, the trust's director, said: "We should be steering our young men and women into colleges of education and learning, not colleges of crime.

"Locking up impressionable 18 and 19-year-olds in adult jails with nothing to do is the surest way to create the hardened criminals of tomorrow.

"For many young people, intensive community approaches that nip offending behaviour in the bud are more effective than a prison sentence in helping them take responsibility and grow out of trouble."

Some 8,317 young people aged 18-20 were in prison in England and Wales at the end of last September, Ministry of Justice figures showed.

And more than half of young adults reoffend within one year of being released from jail, with up to two-thirds committing another offence within two years, today's report said.