Recommendation 16

HM Government Acknowledged

60. The youth justice system aims to prevent offending by children and young people and deal with children at the lowest appropriate level, emphasising diversion and community resolution for low level offending. We believe that Referral Orders (RO), where an intensive approach is available for cases where custody is a viable option, already provide courts and sentencers with an effective tool to sentence first-time offenders who plead guilty at the appropriate level. We do not consider that there is evidence to warrant a review of sentencing options for first-time offenders pleading guilty. 61. For children who appear in court for the first time and plead guilty to an imprisonable offence, an RO is a mandatory sentence unless the court decides that the offence is so serious that a custodial sentence must be imposed. We believe that this already provides courts with an effective sentencing option for children who are first-time offenders and plead guilty, while ensuring that children are dealt with at the lowest appropriate level. A child who receives an RO will be referred to a youth offender panel, which investigates the causes of offending and agrees a programme of interventions to address factors underlying offending behaviour, take responsibility for the consequences of their actions and make reparations to any victims where appropriate. If a child is not complying with the contract agreed with the panel, actions may include a referral from the panel back to the court. The court may then take a number of actions, including the revocation of the Referral Order and resentencing of the child—with the full range of sentencing options that would have been available at the original sentencing. 62. Our best attempts to assess the relative effectiveness of YROs and ROs suggest that ROs are more effective at reducing reoffending. In 2018/19 the reoffending rate for ROs was 32.8%, lower than both YROs (61.7%) and custody (69.3%). 63. In cases where custody is a viable option, the Youth Offending Team can already recommend a more intensive community option—an intensive RO contract. An intensive RO contract should involve a timetable of structured activity each week, which reflects the serious nature of the crime. The intensive RO shares many similarities with Intensive Supervision and Surveillance (ISS), which can be part of a Youth Rehabilitation Order (YRO) sentence. In 2016, an HMI Probation inspection of ROs found that when intensive RO contracts are used, they are used well and divert young people from custody where appropriate.