Recommendation 139

Because the maturation process continues past the age of 18, Justin Russell told us that “one of the obvious things you could do would be to shift the younger age range in probation into the Youth Offending Services themselves”. 264 He said that “it might be better to do it incrementally, moving up to 19, 20 and 21”, as he explained: “The peak age for offending is 18 and it is exactly at that point that you hand them over to a once-a-month probation interview with no speech and language, no CAMHS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services] and no ETE [Education, Training, and Employment] worker. It is an obvious idea. Why not allow Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) to work with children and young adults?” 265