MCA Awards 2003
Winner: Strategy and Business Transformation Category
PA Consulting Group; client - Youth Justice Board
The statistics can seem as frightening as the crimes themselves. A quarter of all crime is committed by young people (17 and under), including 40% of burglaries, vehicle thefts and street robberies.
But despite these statistics, PA Consulting Group's work with the government's Youth Justice Board (YJB) of England and Wales is offering hope.
Tackling youth crime was an area in which Labour had developed detailed policy before it came to power in 1997. Its "joined-up" approach led to 1998's Crime and Disorder Act and the creation of the YJB.
Set up to coordinate the efforts of the police, health and social services, education departments and the voluntary sector in the fight against youth crime, the YJB has produced an imaginative range of measures to try to reverse patterns of criminal behaviour at the earliest stage, even before a first appearance in court.
One of the YJB's priorities was the development of a credible and effective community-based programme that would act as an alternative to custody for the small hard core of repeat offenders. Research findings suggested that 3% of young offenders were responsible for 25% of youth crime.
In 2001, the board asked PA Consulting to support the implementation of a new Pounds 45m flagship scheme for dealing with serious and persistent young offenders - the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP). ISSP is a six-month programme tailored to the individual offender, comprising three months of high intensity supervision (25 hours a week) and a number of surveillance checks every day, followed by three months of lower intensity supervision and surveillance.
Supervision includes education and training, family support, restorative justice, offence-focused work, and interpersonal skills. Surveillance can be via electronic tagging, voice verification or tracking by members of the ISSP teams.
PA worked alongside the board on each stage, from set up of the programme and delivery of schemes in the field, through multi-agency youth offending teams, to improvements in performance and effectiveness.
It was a complex assignment that demanded not only an extensive mix of practical skills - project management, performance improvement and information management - but also detailed knowledge of the intricacies of youth justice, as well as the research evidence about how to reduce re-offending. New technology has to be combined with new ways of working. Sceptics within the courts and police had to be convinced that offenders could be safely diverted from custody.
Government ministers, the YJB and the media had high expectations of ISSP. Meeting those expectations required rapid progress towards implementation. Initially, referrals from the courts to ISSPs were slow - around 150 new-starts per month in January 2002. PA helped schemes with the lowest referral levels improve their spotting of eligible candidates and the success of their recommendations to court. As a result, the numbers of offenders starting ISSPs per month are now running at the target rate of 250 new-starts per month.
"One of our great strengths is that on any given day we can be briefing government ministers, while the next day we can be in a local scheme working alongside a junior member of a youth offending team," says Jim Knox, a member of PA's management group.
Nearly 2,400 young people started on ISSP schemes in the first year of operation, across more than 40 local schemes. In total, 119 of the 155 Youth Offending Teams in England and Wales are part of ISSP schemes.
"PA's work has been of the highest standard in helping schemes to establish themselves, hit their referral targets, and provide effective programmes to the YJB's specification," says Ruth Allan, director of policy at the YJB.
The real test, however, is the impact on re-offending. An independent evaluation of ISSP's effectiveness is expected later this year, but early findings suggest that offending rates in the six months after starting the programme are significantly reduced. "Some of these kids had been written off," she says, "but with this level of help, many are moving forward and keeping out of trouble."
Thanks to PA Consulting, the ISSP is now a credible alternative to custody. There is still a long way to go in the fight against youth crime, but the direction is right.
