sunderland youth offending service

Sunderland is a big city with big ambition. The crime rate is 5% lower than the national rate. There has been a 27% reduction in recorded crime since 2002 and Sunderland is one of the safest cities in the north. Worry about crime has fallen from 47% to 34% in the last 3 years and the authority has achieved a number of exceptional results in relation to reducing offending.

Sunderland has 5 beacon exemplars:

• Partnerships

• Innovation

• Unique and creative data management

• Leadership

• Community engagement

The beacon assessors said ”Sunderland has deservedly secured beacon status for reducing re-offending because they have demonstrated a positive commitment across the range of the theme and have turned their vision and strategy into highly positive outcomes for offenders and the wider community”. Sunderland has demonstrated improved outcomes on youth offending, and against the national trend, the rate of custody for young offenders has dropped from 12% in 1999 to a current figures of 2.8%, with no negative impact on levels of offending. This has been achieved through tackling issues such as access to accommodation and mental health services. There are also increases in the number of adult offenders accessing services and the authority has demonstrated innovative actions for both adult and young offenders, and a willingness to reshape services to meet the needs of service users.

Service Improvement and Innovation

Sunderland has delivered on the Reducing Re-offending Pathways across youths as well as adults and managed transitions. Reductions in the use of custody for young people have been achieved through innovative schemes including:

• Revolving Door Project in partnership with local Youth Offender Institutes to prevent young offenders revolving in and out of custody.

• ISSP (incorporating the award winning New Directions unpaid work scheme for long term unemployed offenders)

• Resettlement and Aftercare Programme engaging young substance misusers.

The council can share examples of positive management at the key point of transition from youth to adult services as well as our resource directory on researched and evidenced based offending behaviour programmes for work with children and young people, for example Be Safe Weapons. Successes include direct restorative justice approaches for looked after children, young people in custody and racially motivated offenders, as well as a range of unpaid work schemes with partners in the statutory, voluntary and business sectors on schemes directed by local communities. Data segmentation is used to target services and resources, examples include (a) hate crime analysis to target perpetrators and (b) analysis identifying children and young people at risk of offending through their association with an adult offender subject to MAPPA (Multi-agency public protection arrangements). Twice winner of the Youth Justice Board Communicating Youth Justice Awards for a turn around approach to negative media coverage, Sunderland has a positive media management strategy to ensure that the public are aware of what the council is doing to reduce crime and as a result worry about crime reduced. A strong performance management and delivery culture exists across youth and adult services and, as a result, Sunderland can demonstrate improvement across the reducing re-offending pathways including key areas such as:

• 86% success in moving adults to independence without further offending. Young offenders with satisfactory accommodation improved from 92% to 99%.

• Young offenders in suitable ETE (Education, training and employment) has improved from 76% to 90%.

• The national waiting times target for the delivery of substitute prescribing (of methadone) is 3 weeks. Following re-provision of its prescribing service the average waiting time in Sunderland is down to 2 days. On some occasions, where an individual’s needs have been particularly acute, prescribing has been delivered within 2 hours. This reduced waiting time has contributed to an increase in the number of criminal justice clients accessing treatment via the Drug Interventions Programme (DIP), which in turn has seen an 18% reduction in arrests for drug related acquisitive crime.

The first national domestic violence perpetrators hostel was developed in Sunderland. Domestic violence repeat offences are down by 10%.

View the Beacon Reducing Re-Offending Theme Guide here >> ( pdf 935k)

Beacon Events

As a Beacon authority for Reducing Re-offending we will be supporting or hosting a number of local, regional and national events through which we will share our learning around reducing re-offending. Forthcoming events include:-

Beacon Reducing Re-Offending Learning Exchange.

(18th September 2008, Holiday Inn Bloomsbury, London) .

For more information and booking visit the Beacon website here >>

For an overview of the workshop delivered by Sunderland click here >> ( pdf 10k)

Frances Done - Chair of the Youth Justice Board Sunderland Reducing Re-Offending Conference.

Sunderland is planning to host it's own Beacon Reducing Re-offending conference on 9th December 2008. We are delighted to announce Frances Done, Chair of the Youth Justice Board as a keynote speaker for the event. For more information on the Beacon conference click here >> ( pdf 264k)

If you would like to more information or you're interested in attending you can contact us at the following e-mail address: yos@sunderland.gov.uk

Beacon Phoenix Case Study

The award winning Phoenix Scheme was designed to address specific offending issues of arson and malicious fire setting. Since it's implementation the scheme has captured the attention of young people with it's appeal, been recognised by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and praised by the media. With evidenced outcomes of increased self-esteem, positive attitudes to education/employment and reduced re-offending, the scheme is now influencing practice and policy elsewhere by duplication in other areas.

Read about the Beacon Phoenix Case Study here >> ( pdf 43k)

See the Phoenix Project activities in action here >>

Contact Us

If you would like to know more about what we've learnt as a Beacon for Reducing Re-Offending or are interested in any of our Beacon events please contact us at:

yos@sunderland.gov.uk

Published : 12/09/2008

Contact email