Recommendation 140

We heard reservations about this proposal. Phil Bowen told us that, while he was “attracted to the proposal”, he was also “concerned that youth justice services would need to differentiate how they supervise and treat 14 year-olds compared to 21 year-olds”. He argued that “there would be different characters, and you would not want to mix those populations in particular ways” and that “it would require a sophisticated approach”. 266 Kim Thornden-Edwards said that “you would need to think about the safeguarding issues of seeing both children and adults in the same service, potentially in the same building”. 267 Damian Hinds MP agreed that “there is something unique about dealing with children”. 268 Andrew Neilson stated that his “worry about the proposal is that it could dilute what Youth Offending Services are successfully providing to under-18s”. He argued that “if it were done simply by adding all these extra people in and seeing what happened, it would need to be properly resourced”. Instead, the Howard League for Penal Reform considered the idea of “a separate, but very similar service for 18 to 25 year olds, rather than expanding the Youth Offending Service in that way”. 269 Innovating to support young adults