Case study

PA's work for Youth Justice Board, UK

Strategy & Business Transformation Category - MCA Awards

Position:
Winner

Year:
2001

The Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB) was established with the overall aim of reducing youth offending. A key objective is to reduce delay in the youth justice process to support the Government's pledge to halve the time from arrest to sentence for persistent young offenders. Delivering the pledge requires significant local improvements in practice, and the decentralized structure of the criminal justice system complicates matters.

The challenges for PA's team were to identify what changes will speed up youth justice, and to make sure they are adopted on the ground. The team's key activities included formulating best practice; providing hands-on support to 120 inter-agency groups; developing an IT solution and creating a knowledge-sharing Web site. The PA team then moved from advice to practical implementation, helping to manage milestones, risk and communications while contributing to policy development. When PA began the project - almost two years after the target had been set - average arrest-to-sentence times were 120 days. The target was delivered in June 2001, 11 months ahead of schedule.