PA Consulting Group was appointed by the Youth Justice Board in June 1999 to help deliver the Government's manifesto pledge on youth crime. The assignment posed a major challenge for PA to improve performance in a highly diverse, complex and politically sensitive environment.
The Youth Justice Board (YJB) advises the Home Secretary on the operation of the youth justice system and focuses on the causes and responses to youth crime. To support the delivery of its aims, the YJB was charged with co-ordinating the national and local effort to reduce delays in the youth justice process.
Swift and efficient justice is an essential element of a successful youth justice system. It enables the young person's offending behaviour to be quickly confronted, it can reduce the stress felt by victims and witnesses, it lowers the costs of administering justice and improves the public's confidence in the criminal justice system as a whole.
The Government's commitment to tackle delays in the youth justice system was expressed as one of its five key manifesto pledges: to halve the average arrest to sentence time of persistent young offenders (PYOs) from 142 to 71 days.
PA was tasked by the YJB to manage the programme of change and performance improvement that would be required to deliver the pledge. "A pretty tough assignment," commented Lord Warner of Brockley, chair of the YJB. "We needed help in getting to all levels of the criminal justice system and we were looking for consultants who had real credibility."
First, there was no standard youth justice process. Justice is delivered locally in 42 areas, each with significant differences in practice and organisation. Change had to be delivered in a multi-agency environment, involving the police, Crown Prosecution Service, magistrates' courts, Crown Court and youth offending teams. All have differing degrees of autonomy; some are structured along different geographical boundaries. This made it hard to identify the real source of delay and in some areas encouraged a culture of passing the buck.
There were a large number of local decision-makers, which presented a major communications challenge.
There were serious deficiencies in performance information. In poorly performing areas, there was a lack of a performance management culture and so what little useful information existed tended to be passed over. Indeed, at the start of the project, there was no agreement locally on what was baseline performance against the pledge.
Throughout the project, the environment in which justice was delivered was changing. The Government launched many initiatives, which competed for local management attention.
Central government involvement in the pledge was also complex. Although leadership was provided by the Youth Justice Board, central departments, including the Home Office, the Lord Chancellor's Department and the Law Office's, had a direct interest in the pledge and responsibility to the agencies involved in delivery. Clear messages needed to be sent from the centre, but initially these were not always co-ordinated, which led to confusion in the field about what they had to achieve and why. PA's work programme – developed jointly with the YJB – contained a number of strands designed to gain the confidence of local stakeholders, generate rapid performance improvement and provide the YJB with the management information required to direct the project.
PA's first step was to analyse the raw data which lay behind the nationally published pledge to understand which areas could make the greatest contribution, allowing resources to be targeted accordingly. PA made contact at a senior level in all areas and ensured that the pledge issue was considered strategically by chief executives and budget holders, and at an operational level by individuals who worked in or supported particular courts.
PA had to convince local managers that more needed to be done urgently to identify the particular courts, police stations, Crown Prosecution Service branches etc, within their areas that posed the greatest problems. The paucity of good information was a major problem and PA set up Web-based and other systems to provide bespoke quarterly and monthly performance reports, performance health check reports and monitoring information on the status of live cases. PA also developed a case management system and supporting software to enable the local criminal justice agencies to manage their portfolio of youth cases.
PA examined good practice across a number of agencies and produced a detailed guide, which was promoted through a series of conferences. The team also developed a "reducing delays" website which, among other things, promoted innovative practice and allowed ad hoc queries to be addressed electronically.
PA supported 97% of local areas in developing interagency improvement plans, which set out clear responsibilities, targets and time scales for practical steps. The planning process (which PA largely brokered) helped stimulate interagency co-operation and "buy in". The interagency groups responsible for developing local plans have continued to monitor their implementation, impact and any issues arising.
PA sought to ensure commitment for the plan within each area and promulgated the key elements to individual staff in a straightforward and accessible way. In priority areas PA convened a number of launch conferences and workshops. The team also implemented a communications strategy with local agencies and spent considerable time undertaking face-to-face briefings to explain the benefits and allay concerns. PA also actively supported the involvement of ministers and senior policy makers in communicating the seriousness of delays.
It was clear that many staff involved in the youth justice system could do their job better with the right support and skills. PA developed several easy-to-use IT tools to enable more effective case management and decision flow-charts.
The PA team was not just operating "in the trenches". A key element of the assignment was the ability to be active and influential at the national level, by drawing on its extensive field experience.
"PA has very successfully managed to blend helping people at the strategic, government and political level with getting involved locally," said Lord Warner. PA regularly briefed the YJB ministers and senior policy officials on progress. In response to a perceived slow-down towards the end of the year, PA and the YJB took steps to advise the Government on measures that were needed to maintain the focus. The PA team briefed and supported ministers in their meetings with senior managers in the police, CPS, magistrates' and Crown courts to ensure that there was a common understanding on each issue and what needed to be done. As a result, a short-term decline in performance was arrested and progress was back on track.
The principal benefit of this project has been to help the Government make substantial progress towards delivering the manifesto pledge on persistent young offenders, as set in 1997. To date, the average time taken for a persistent young offender to be sentenced following arrest has reduced by 70% of the target, from 142 days to 94 days. Independent feedback from local areas has been extremely positive, with 95% reporting that they are either satisfied of very satisfied.
"PA has been the catalyst in the development of strategic plans and practical monitoring systems, which have contributed to substantial progress against the target," said David Blundell, Chief Crown Prosecutor, West Midlands.
PA's work with local areas has also delivered further benefits:
Local agencies, in particular magistrates' courts, are more aware of how to use management information and how to manage performance in the justice system.
Practitioners have commented on how co-operation with partner agencies in the criminal justice system has improved.
In many areas, there have reductions in delay for all cases handled in the youth courts.
As a newly established agency, it was crucial for the YJB to engage effectively with criminal justice agencies across the country. Many practitioners have commended the YJB for their innovative use of consultants to implement a major initiative, which has helped raise its profile and credibility.
The real achievement of this project, however, is the impact on the lives of persistent young offenders and also victims, witnesses and jurors with a legitimate interest in swift justice.
PYO cases are now prioritised through the justice process throughout England and Wales; the children are confronted with the consequences of their crimes, and their offending behaviour can be addressed as soon as possible.
Consultancy: PA Consulting Group
Client: Youth Justice Board
Category: Strategy and business transformation
Award: Category Winner
Copyright © The Independent. All rights reserved.
