Luton's youth offending team marks its 'most successful year yet' preventing crime

This is the challenge according to Luton youth offending service manager Dave Collins - who presented the annual review of the town’s youth justice three-year plan 2019-22.

“This has been the best performing year of our youth offending service in Luton,” he told the council’s children’s services review group.

“The Youth Justice Board (YJB) said we no longer need to submit a plan this year.

“But I wasn’t happy with that. Our plans have been a journey... 2019 through to March 31, 2020 has been nothing short of phenomenal.

“The YJB records it as a rate per 100,000 of population. Luton is currently on 145 where as the national is more than 200.

“There were only 33 young people who entered the criminal justice system in 2019/20, so absolutely phenomenal.

“These aren’t figures skewed now that we’re living in a Covid world,” he said.

“Each young person, who comes into the criminal justice system, costs this local authority, in some cases tens of thousands of pounds, depending on what intervention they’re on.

“As long as someone is diverted appropriately it’s a cash saving as well as saving for that young person.

“So 89 per cent of those we’ve diverted over the last two years have not offended.”

For young people who are already in the criminal justice system who go on to re-offend, Luton is at 25 per cent compared to 39 per cent nationally.

“We’ve never been below 33 per cent,” added Mr Collins. “It’s a measure of how successful your services are.

“A lot of the joined up work we’ve been doing with children’s services and the police across the multi-agency gangs panel has all contributed to that.

“Again it’s gold star time. As the head of service it scares me because of how we match this next year.

“Last year, we had 20 custodial episodes involving 13 young people. This year, 2019/20, we’ve had seven episodes, with five youths.

“Each of those young people who go into custody not only is it a financial burden on the local authority but also on children’s services because when they go on remand get allocated a social worker.

“Some of the work which happened this year really needed reporting which is why I decided to do this plan.

“We’ve been on a journey from where we were five years ago, when we simply didn’t know what young people we had out there at risk of gang associated behaviour and criminal exploitation, to a point where I can say we’ve excelled.”

Conservative Icknield councillor Jeff Petts said: “We can’t fail to be impressed with the way you’re running this operation.

“But how do we know the kids aren’t reoffending, rather than just not being caught?” he asked.

Mr Collins replied: “We don’t know that, unless they’re caught. I can talk about how we know about reoffending. It’s not us that works that out.

“The youth justice board figure is 25 per cent. That’s not our figure. We’re told that.

“Our diversion reoffending is something we do. Each year, every young person’s that’s been diverted, 347 up to March 31st, we get accurate data.

“When I say 89 per cent have not reoffended that’s based on fact.

“Coming back to your original question, if they’re not caught you don’t know.”