Breaking down barriers to diversion after COVID-19 - Centre for Justice Innovation
“The unprecedented and constantly evolving nature of the COVID-19 outbreak has placed huge demands on the Youth Justice System in England. Numerous lockdowns and the ongoing effects of new variants has heavily influenced the way in which youth courts, youth offending teams and police work with and/or support children.
Recent statistics suggest that the sharp decrease in children being sentenced at court could be the result of court closures and pauses to jury hearings during the periods of restrictions during the pandemic and the subsequent backlog of cases. In spite of this, the pandemic has illustrated how diversion allows for youth justice agencies to be more innovative in how they respond to offending. A recent report found that during the pandemic, police & diversion services adapted by delivering courses and interventions online. They found the ease of access has led to better attendance and engagement. Similarly, in our interview with Eva Thompson, a Speech and Language Therapist at Suffolk County Council, she noticed that at the beginning of the pandemic, moving online had been beneficial in building relationships and making children ease. This was especially the case for children who struggle with being in new environments and unfamiliar people or with special education needs. In addition, using telephone calls or being off camera during an online session was helpful.
Vulnerability
Although moving online has had its benefits, we have seen how the pandemic shone a light on the digital and technical divide across communities. The HM Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) review of youth offending services during COVID-19 emphasised that children and families lacking access to equipment and at risk children were particularly vulnerable. I spoke with Sarah Ross, an operational manager at Leeds Youth Justice service (YJS), who noted that during the start of the pandemic, ‘welfare was very much the priority and so much of our resources went into sharing food parcels and making sure children had access to laptops’. Children with high vulnerability required a multi-agency package of support to reduce the risk of harm. Recent data shows that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the mental health of children with one in six children aged 5 to 16 years being identified as having a probable mental disorder in 2020, increasing from one in nine in 2017.[1] The full extent to which the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns has had an effect on children remain to be unseen so ensuring children are appropriately assessed and have access to support services is essential to improving diversion for children. Sarah mentioned how Leeds YJS continued to have their out of court disposal (OOCD) panel throughout and how physical contact priority was given to the ‘highest risk children in terms of risk of harm’.
Effective partnership working
As we move forward with the pandemic, good multi-agency and partnership working is essential for providing a whole systems approach to offending behaviour for a child. The increase in workload and decrease of resource, time and support[2] has been disruptive to good cross-agency working and can be seen as a barrier to diversion.
I spoke with Marie-Anne Hall, the locality specialist lead for Out of court and Diversion in North East Lincolnshire, who found that a barrier to diversion has been ‘lack of understanding and lack of resource’. In her experience ‘new officers’ working in North East Lincolnshire were ‘not understanding what diversion was’ and thought it was less robust than a YCC (Youth Conditional Caution) or a court order’ which in turn saw less use of diversion. In some cases, Marie-Anne found that children were being escalated through the justice system because some officers felt the offence type required prosecution. To remedy this, they changed the diversion policy to state that ‘any offence could be considered and then filtered from that point’ which put the context and background of the child at the forefront of the decision making rather than personal values. Marie-Anne also worked closely with magistrates to develop training and also with Humberside police to develop a scrutiny panel to look at all decisions across the region. Marie-Anne states that resources have always been a barrier to interventions for children, ‘Investment needs to come from the government to enable us to prevent the escalation of a criminal career and identity, by working with more young people before they commit a crime’.
Racial disproportionality
It is concerning that the pre-existing barriers to accessing and engaging with diversion such as racial disproportionality have been exacerbated. Our report on racial disproportionality in youth diversion found a number of ways in which diversion practice, while mostly beneficial for the children who go through, may further racial disparities. This was seen in risk assessments of children, unconscious bias from staff and strict eligibility criteria such as the requirement for an admission of guilt and no prior offences.
While the youth justice system has seen a significant drop in first time entrants (FTEs), arrests and custody numbers in part due to the pandemic[3], there is still a consistent rise of black children being represented in the youth justice system. The data shows that while the number FTEs to the youth justice system has been falling for each ethnicity over the last ten years, the proportion of FTEs from a Black background has increased over the same period, from 9% to 16%. According to the 2011 Census, black children make up 4% of the 10-17-year-old population but make up 12% of children cautioned or sentenced.[4] This means that black children are less likely to be offered diversion or are not meeting the threshold for diversion. Unfortunately, due to gaps in the data available on youth diversion particularly around demographic data, getting an accurate picture of diversion provision and effectiveness will continue to prove difficult. We call for centralised data collection on diversion in our report on mainstreaming diversion, but we know that locally many youth offending teams are collecting this data and are assessing how they can reduce this disparity.
Conclusion
In order to effectively deliver diversion to children who have offended, there needs to be more awareness of the effects the pandemic has had on children and to what extent this has impeded on their engagement with and access to diversion. We know that children with vulnerabilities and from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, particularly black children are particularly at risk of not receiving the level of support they need or being escalated up through the justice system. Centralised data collection, better training for staff and partners and in depth assessments of the unmet needs of the child are crucial to ensuring children are diverted effectively during the pandemic and after.”
Sources:
[1] NHS England (2020) Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, 2020: Wave 1 follow up to the 2017 survey
[2] Criminal Justice Joint Inspection (2021) Impact of the pandemic on the Criminal Justice System: A joint view of the Criminal Justice Chief Inspectors on the Criminal Justice System’s response to Covid-19
[3] Ministry of Justice/ Youth Justice Board (2022) Youth Justice Statistics 2020/21
[4] Ministry of Justice (2021) Criminal Justice Statistics quarterly, England and Wales, year ending June 2021 (quarterly)
This blog accompanies a series of policy briefings produced by the AYJ as part of the UKRI-funded Impact of COVID-19 on Youth Justice project, delivered in partnership between the AYJ and the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
AYJ would like to thank Bami Jolaoso, Innovative Practice Officer at the Centre for Justice Innovation, and the rest of the Centre’s team for their valuable contribution. Find out more about the Centre:
Website: justiceinnovation.org
Twitter: @CJInnovation